erable occasions. No one desires the presence of the man who while
having nothing to give must persist in keeping himself in evidence, even
if by strategy or force. From stories she was familiar with, she had
gathered that the first Reuben Vanderpoel had certainly lacked a certain
youth of soul she felt in this modern struggler for life. He had been
the cleverer man of the two; G. Selden she secretly liked the better.

The curiosity of Mrs. Buttle, who was the nurse, had been awakened by a
singular feature of her patient's feverish wanderings.

"He keeps muttering, miss, things I can't make out about Lord Mount
Dunstan, and Mr. Penzance, and some child he calls Little Willie. He
talks to them the same as if he knew them--same as if he was with them
and they were talking to him quite friendly."

One morning Betty, coming to make her visit of inquiry found the patient
looking thoughtful, and when she commented upon his air of pondering,
his reply cast light upon the mystery.

"Well, Miss Vanderpoel," he explained, "I was lying here thinking of
Lord Mount Dunstan and Mr. Penzance, and how well they treated me--I
haven't told you about that, have I?

"That explains what Mrs. Buttle said," she answered. "When you were
delirious you talked frequently to Lord Mount Dunstan and Mr. Penzance.
We both wondered why."

Then he told her the whole story. Beginning with his sitting on the
grassy bank outside the park, listening to the song of the robin,
he ended with the adieux at the entrance gates when the sound of her
horse's trotting hoofs had been heard by each of them.

"What I've been lying here thinking of," he said, "is how queer it was
it happened just that way. If I hadn't stopped just that minute, and if
you hadn't gone by, and if Lord Mount Dunstan hadn't known you and said
who you were, Little Willie would have been in London by this time,
hustling to get a cheap bunk back to New York in."

"Because?" inquired Miss Vanderpoel.

G. Selden laughed and hesitated a moment. Then he made a clean breast of
it.

"Say, Miss Vanderpoel," he said, "I hope it won't make you mad if I
own up. Ladies like you don't know anything about chaps like me. On the
square and straight out, when I seen you and heard your name I couldn't
help remembering whose daughter you was. Reuben S. Vanderpoel spells a
big thing. Why, when I was in New York we fellows used to get together
and talk about what it'd mean to the chap who could get nex