ety girl--in a students' rooming house--at Prof. Farmer's door? Why
couldn't she tell him? And why were her eyes making fun of him--or
weren't they? His fingers went instinctively to his--perhaps too hastily
selected?--cravat.

Then Susan really did laugh, but happily, not unkindly, and walked on in
past him, shutting the door behind her as she came.

"Jimmy Kane," she said, "if I weren't so gorgeously glad to see you
again, I could beat you for not remembering!"

"Good Lord!" he babbled. "Why--good Lord! You're Susan!"

It was all too much for him; concealment was impossible--he was
flabbergasted. Sparkling with sheer delight at his _gaucherie_, Susan
put out both hands. Her impulsiveness instantly revived him; he seized
her hands for a moment as he might have gripped a long-lost boy
friend's.

"You never guessed I could look so--presentable, did you?" demanded
Susan.

"Presentable!" The word jarred on him, it was so dully inadequate.

"I have a maid," continued Susan demurely. "Everything in Ambo's
house--Ambo is my guardian, you know; Mr. Hunt--well, everything in his
house is a work of art. So he pays a maid to see that I am--always. I am
simply clay in her hands, and it does make a difference. But I didn't
have a maid on Birch Street, Jimmy."

Jimmy's blue eyes capered. This was American humor--the kind he was born
to and could understand. Happiness and ease returned with it. If Susan
could talk like that while looking like that--well, Susan was _there_!
She was all right.

Within five minutes he was giving her a brief, comradely chronicle of
the missing years, and when Phil got back it was to find them seated
together, Susan leaning a little forward from the depths of a Morris
chair to follow more attentively Jimmy's minute technical description of
the nature of the steel alloys used in the manufacture of automobiles.

They rose at Phil's entrance with a mingling, eager chatter of
explanation. Phil later--much later--admitted to me that he had never
felt till that moment how damnably he was past forty, and how fatally
Susan was not. He further admitted that it was far from the most
agreeable discovery of a studious life.

"What do you think, Prof. Farmer," exclaimed Jimmy, "of our meeting
again accidentally like this--and me not knowing Susan! You can't beat
that much for a small world!"

Phil sought Susan's eye, and was somewhat relieved by the quizzical
though delighted gleam in it.

"Well, Jimm