and I've got more than a living to make. Of course, that'll
come all right if I have fair luck. If it was easy money plugging my
way through college, it will be easy plugging it through the world.
Don't you size it up about that way?"

Kate clasped her hands and leaned forward.

"If you're playing the long game, I suppose so. But wouldn't you do
better at least to hint to the girl?"

"I guess you can advise me about that," said he. "Better than anybody
I know. Suppose I tell you all about it?" A little panic ran through
the nerves of Kate.

"Now?" she said, "are--are you ready?"

"Now-time is good-time," he said. "Well, I guess you've savveyed just
who it is and what's the matter. It's--it's Miss Gray--Eleanor Gray."

To the end of her days, Kate Waddington remembered to be thankful for
a certain cotton-tail rabbit. At that moment precisely, this fearling
of the woods streaked down the trail, pursued by a dog whose heavy
crashing sounded in the distance; came out upon them, whirled with a
loud roaring of fern and leaves, screamed the heart-rending scream of
a frightened rabbit, and dashed off into the wood. The sound, coming
in this tender moment, betrayed Bert Chester into a guilty start. So,
when he looked back, her face was as smoothly beautiful as ever and
she was even smiling.

"You lucky boy!" she said. And then, "I don't blame you. I wouldn't
blame any man." Bertram fairly glowed.

"I knew you'd agree with me," he said. "Say, what chance do I
stand--honest, what do you believe she thinks of me?"

"Honest, I never heard her say. It is likely she hasn't begun to think
of it at all. Women are slower than men about such things. How long
have you been--in love with her?"

"Of course, I've been that way ever since I saw her first--ever since
I was a student, picking prunes for her uncle, and went down and
helped her run a bull off her place. I thought then that I never saw
nicer eyes or a more ladylike girl. She's always given me the glassy
eye. I think she hates me--no, it isn't that, either. She just feels
superior to me."

"Oh, perhaps not that!"

"Well, anyhow, I was in college and any one girl looked about the same
to me as any other--" Bertram wrinkled his brows in contempt for his
utter, undeveloped youngness of two years before--"but I remembered
her always. When I saw her sitting in the Hotel Marseillaise that
evening, I felt queer; and after I called on her I just knew I had it.
Funny, you com