gentleness; but the man in him is the same
man I loved in my girlhood days. When John maps out a course to act
upon, if he believes he is right, nothing can swerve him--nothing. And
sometimes he has been innocently wrong. I told Miss Challoner all his
good qualities and his bad. She told me that she, too, has her faults.
She added that there was only one other man who could in any manner
compare with John, and that man is you."

"I?" his face growing warm.

"Yes. But she had no right to compare anybody with my boy," laughing.

"There isn't any comparison whatever," admitted Warrington, laughing
too. "But it was very kind of Miss Challoner to say a good word for
me." And then upon impulse he related how, and under what
circumstances, he had first met the actress.

"It reads like a story,--a versatile woman. This talk has done me much
good. I know the affection that exists between you and John, and I am
confident that you would not misrepresent anything. I shall sleep
easier to-night."

The portieres rattled, and Patty stood in the doorway.

"Everybody's gone; may I come in?"

Warrington rose. "I really should be very glad to make your
acquaintance," gallantly. "It's so long a time since I've met young
people--"

"Young people!" indignantly. "I am not young people; I am twenty,
going on twenty-one."

"I apologize." Warrington sat down.

Thereupon Miss Patty, who was a good sailor, laid her course close to
the wind, and with few tacks made her goal; which was the complete
subjugation of this brilliant man. She was gay, sad, witty and wise;
and there were moments when her mother looked at her in puzzled
surprise. As for Warrington, he went from one laugh into another.

Oh, dazzling twenty; blissful, ignorant, confident twenty! Who among
you would not be twenty, when trouble passes like cloud-shadows in
April; when the door of the world first opens? Ay, who would not trade
the meager pittance, wrested from the grinding years, for one fleet,
smiling dream of twenty?

"It is all over town, the reply you made to Mrs. Winthrop and that
little, sawed-off, witty daughter of hers."

"Patty!"

"Well, she is sawed-off and witty."

"What did I say?" asked Warrington, blushing. He had forgotten the
incident.

"Mrs. Winthrop asked you to make her daughter an epigram, and you
replied that Heaven had already done that."

"By the way," said Warrington, when the laughter subsided, "I
understand that my old dog has b