ry good now," she said seriously.

"Why?" he asked. "Just to keep from being disinherited? That wouldn't be
so awful."

"Wouldn't it be awful to you?" she asked, turning her bright eyes upon
him. "What could be worse?"

"Things," he said very vaguely.

Then she touched up the cob a little; and, after a minute or two, as she
said nothing, he continued:

"I almost fancy quitting college and going to work. I was thinking about
it last night."

She touched up the cob a little more, and remained silent.

Finally he said:

"What would you think of my doing that?"

"I don't know," she said slowly. "You see, I'm a great philosopher. I
never fret or worry, because I regard it as useless; similarly, I never
rebel at the way fate shapes my life--I regard that as something past
helping. I believe in predestination; do you?"

She turned and looked at him so seriously--so unlike her _riante_ self--that
he felt startled, and did not know what to say for a minute.

Then:

"I don't know," he said slowly; "I don't know that I dare to. It rather
startles me to think that maybe all of our future is laid out now."

"It doesn't startle me," she said. "It seems to me the natural plan of the
universe. I believe that everything that crosses our path--down to the
tiniest gnat--comes there in the fulfillment of a purpose."

"I'm sure that all the mosquitoes that ever crossed my path came there in
the fulfillment of a purpose," Jack interrupted. "I never doubted _that_."

She smiled a little.

"It's the same with people," she went on.

[Illustration 2]

"Do not let us play any longer,' she said. 'Let us be in earnest.'"

"Only less painful," he interrupted again.

"Sometimes not," she said, with a look that silenced him. "Sometimes much
more so--my Cousin Maude, for example."

"Hip, hip, hurrah for the mosquito!" he murmured. They laughed softly
together. Then she grew earnest, and looked so grave that he became
serious too.

"There is always a purpose," she said, with a touch of some feeling which
he had never guessed at. "If you and I have met, it is because we are to
have some influence over one another. I can't just see how; I can't form
any idea--"

"I can," he said eagerly.

She looked up so suddenly and steadily that he was silent.

"Do not let us play any longer," she said. "Let us be in earnest."

"But I am in earnest," he asseverated.

"You don't know what I mean," she