een a less sweet, sympathetic girl, she could hardly have kept from
smiling at the way Peter's face and figure stiffened, as the group came
in sight. But Miss Pierce had decided, before she met Peter, that she
should like him, and, moreover, that he was a man who needed help. Let
any woman reach these conclusions about a man, and for some reason quite
beyond logic or philosophy, he ceases to be ridiculous. So instead of
smiling, she bridged over the awful greetings with feminine engineering
skill quite equal to some great strategic movement in war. Peter was
made to shake hands with Mrs. Pierce, but was called off to help Miss
Pierce out of the carriage, before speech was necessary. Then a bundle
was missing in the bottom of the carriage, and Mr. Pawling, the New York
swell, was summoned to help Peter find it, the incident being seized
upon to name the two to each other. Finally, he was introduced to the
two girls, but, almost instantly, Watts and Peter were sent to their
rooms; and Miss Pierce, nodding her head in a way which denoted
satisfaction, remarked as she went to her own room, "Really, Helen, I
don't think it will be so very hard, after all. He's very tractable."

As Peter came downstairs, before dinner, he speculated on whether he
should be able to talk to Miss Pierce. He rather doubted from past
experience, if such a result was attainable, seeing that there were two
other men, who would of course endeavor to do the same. But strangely
enough the two men were already seated by the New York girls, and a
vacant chair was next that holding Miss Pierce. What was more, he was at
once summoned to fill it, and in five minutes was again entirely
unconscious of everything but the slate-colored eyes, looking so
pleasantly into his. Then he took Miss Pierce in to dinner, and sat
between her and her mother again becoming absorbed in the slate-colored
eyes, which seemed quite willing to be absorbed. After dinner, too, when
the women had succeeded the weed, Peter in someway found it very easy to
settle himself near Miss Pierce. Later that night Peter sat in his room,
or rather, with half his body out of the window, puffing his pipe, and
thinking how well he had gone through the day. He had not made a single
slip. Nothing to groan over. "I'm getting more experienced," he thought,
with the vanity noticeable in even the most diffident of collegians,
never dreaming that everything that he had said or done in the last few
hours,