h to compromise her?'

'That's a word we don't use much here, Mr. Ordinsky. A girl who makes
her own living can ask a college boy to supper without being talked
about. We take some things for granted.'

'Then I have misjudged you, and I ask your pardon'--he bowed gravely.
'Miss Lingard,' he went on, 'is an absolutely trustful heart. She
has not learned the hard lessons of life. As for you and me, noblesse
oblige'--he watched me narrowly.

Lena returned with the vest. 'Come in and let us look at you as you go
out, Mr. Ordinsky. I've never seen you in your dress suit,' she said as
she opened the door for him.

A few moments later he reappeared with his violin-case a heavy muffler
about his neck and thick woollen gloves on his bony hands. Lena
spoke encouragingly to him, and he went off with such an important
professional air that we fell to laughing as soon as we had shut the
door. 'Poor fellow,' Lena said indulgently, 'he takes everything so
hard.'

After that Ordinsky was friendly to me, and behaved as if there
were some deep understanding between us. He wrote a furious article,
attacking the musical taste of the town, and asked me to do him a great
service by taking it to the editor of the morning paper. If the editor
refused to print it, I was to tell him that he would be answerable to
Ordinsky 'in person.' He declared that he would never retract one word,
and that he was quite prepared to lose all his pupils. In spite of
the fact that nobody ever mentioned his article to him after it
appeared--full of typographical errors which he thought intentional--he
got a certain satisfaction from believing that the citizens of Lincoln
had meekly accepted the epithet 'coarse barbarians.' 'You see how
it is,' he said to me, 'where there is no chivalry, there is no
amour-propre.' When I met him on his rounds now, I thought he carried
his head more disdainfully than ever, and strode up the steps of front
porches and rang doorbells with more assurance. He told Lena he would
never forget how I had stood by him when he was 'under fire.'

All this time, of course, I was drifting. Lena had broken up my serious
mood. I wasn't interested in my classes. I played with Lena and Prince,
I played with the Pole, I went buggy-riding with the old colonel, who
had taken a fancy to me and used to talk to me about Lena and the 'great
beauties' he had known in his youth. We were all three in love with
Lena.

Before the first of June, Gasto