So the afternoon passed happily; with reading, with talking, with little confidences, interrupted, now and then, by the busy instrument on the table, or by some trainman stalking in to get his orders, and going out with a knowing smile upon his lips. All too soon, as it seemed to Allan, the night man came up the steps; for the first time in his experience, Allan found the sight of him unwelcome. Ten minutes later, the train was bearing him and Bess Heywood homewards. That half-hour journey never seemed so short.

Mr. Heywood was awaiting them on the grimy Wadsworth platform.

“Thank you, Allan,” he said, “for taking care of the runaway. I thought she was old enough to travel alone, but it seems I was mistaken. I’ll have to send a nurse along hereafter.”

“Good-bye, Allan,” said the Vision, holding out her hand, and Allan was quite shocked, when he took it, by its smallness and softness.
“THE AFTERNOON PASSED HAPPILY.”

? 201 ?

“Good-bye,” he answered, but his tongue dared not pronounce her name.

He watched them until they disappeared in the darkness, then turned away across the yards, meditating anxiously whether a Being with a hand so small and soft, so evidently fragile, could long withstand the buffets of a world so rude and harsh as this one.

“Well, young lady,” said Mr. Heywood, at the dinner-table that evening, “I hope you were sufficiently punished for your thoughtlessness in wandering away from your train.”

“It wasn’t such terrible punishment, papa,” answered Bess. “I had a very pleasant afternoon. I think Allan is just fine.”

“So do I,” agreed her father promptly. “He’s a nice boy.”

“And he knows such a lot,” added Bess. “I felt a perfect booby.”

“Quite a salutary feeling for a young lady,” nodded her father. “Especially for one who has always had an excellent opinion of herself.”

“Oh, papa!” protested Bess. “I’m not conceited!”

“No, not that precisely,” agreed her father; "but most girls, when they get to be about eighteen, and have all the boys making sheep’s-eyes at them, begin to think that this world was made especially for them, and that nobody else has any right in it, ? 202 ? except perhaps to hustle around and provide them with ribbons and chiffon ruffles. It’s good for them to get a hint, now and then, that the world is really something more than a pedestal for them to stand on."

Bess sighed, a little dismally.

“I never understood before,” she said, “how awfully I’ve been wasting my time.”

“If you never waste any more, my dear, you’ll have nothing to regret. Most women don’t wake up to the fact that they’re wasting their time until they’re middle-aged, and by that time they’ve fallen into such a habit of doing so that they can’t change.”

“I believe,” added Bess, thoughtfully, “that I’ll ask Allan to the party I’m going to give next week.”

“Do, by all means,” said her father, heartily. “It will do you good, and it won’t hurt him.”

So it came to pass, a few days later, that the postman mounted the steps to the little Welsh cottage and left there a tiny envelope addressed to “Mr. Allan West.” Mary received it, and turned it over and over.

“It’s from a girl,” was her comment. “Bad cess to her. But I knowed th’ girls couldn’t let sich a foine-lookin’ lad as that alone. They’ll be makin’ eyes at him, an’ pertendin’ t’ edge away, an’ all th’ toime invitin’ him on—don’t I know ’em!” And Mary grew quite warm with indignation, entirely ? 203 ? forgetting that she herself had been a girl once upon a time, and an adept in all the arts of that pretty game of advance and retreat which she now denounced so vigorously.

She laid the letter on Allan’s plate, and noted the little shock of surprise with which he found it there when he sat down to supper that evening.

“Hello; what’s this?” he asked, picking it up.

“It’s a letter come fer ye this mornin’,” answered Mary, and she and Jack and Mamie all waited for him to open it, which he did with a hand not wholly steady.

“‘Miss Elizabeth Heywood,’” he read, “‘requests the pleasure of Mr. Allan West’s company, Thursday evening, April 28th. Seven o’clock.’”

“Well, of all th’ forrerd minxes!” burst out Mary. “Why, when I was a girl, I’d a’ no more thought o’ writin’ a young man t’ come an’ see me—”

Jack interrupted her with a roar of laughter.

“Why, Mary,” he cried, “don’t ye see! It’s a party she’s askin’ him to—th’ sup’rintindint’s daughter!”

“A party! Th’ sup’rintindint’s daughter!” and Mary paused between jealousy for her boy and pride that he should have received such an invitation.

“An’ of course he’ll go,” added Jack, with decision. “It’s a shame t’ kape a foine felly like Allan shut up here with us old fogies.”

“Well, I’ll say this,” said Mary, pouring out the ? 204 ? coffee, “if he does go, they won’t be no finer lookin’ young felly there.”

And I am inclined to think that Betty Heywood thought so, too, when she came forward to meet him that Thursday evening.

“How glad I am to see you,” she said, with a bright smile of welcome.

As for Allan, he was for the moment tongue-tied. If she had been a vision in her gray travelling-suit, what was she now, clad, as it seemed to him, in a sparkling cloud of purest white? She noticed his confusion, and no doubt interpreted it aright—as what girl would not?—for she went on, without appearing to notice it:

“And I want my mother to know you. Here she is, over here,” and she led the way to a beautiful woman of middle age, who sat in a great chair at one end of the room, the centre of a little court. “Mother, this is Allan West.”

Mrs. Heywood held out to him a hand even smaller and softer than her daughter’s.

“I am glad to know you, my boy,” she said. “Mr. Heywood has spoken so much of you that I feel as though I had known you a long time. Won’t you sit down here by me awhile?”

Betty gave a little nod of satisfaction, and hurried away to meet some other guests, whirling away with her the circle which had been about her mother’s chair. Allan sat down, thinking that he ? 205 ? had never heard a voice as sweet as Mrs. Heywood’s.

“We invalids, you know,” she went on, with a little smile, “must be humoured. We can’t go to people, so people must come to us. It’s like Mahomet and the mountain.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that,” answered Allan, with a shy glance of admiration, “but of the fisherman and the Princess.”

“So you know your Arabian Nights!” said Mrs. Heywood, colou............