rm with an
expression which Gustave Dore would gratefully have found suggestive.
William was conscious of a voice continually in action near him, but
not of what it said. Miss Boke was telling him of the dancing "up at the
lake" where she had spent the summer, and how much she had loved it, but
William missed all that. Upon the many-colored platform the ineffable
One drifted to and fro, back and forth; her little blonde head, in a
golden net, glinting here and there like a bit of tinsel blowing across
a flower-garden.

And when that dance and its encore were over she went to lean against a
tree, while Wallace Banks fanned her, but she was so busy with Wallace
that she did not notice William, though she passed near enough to waft a
breath of violet scent to his wan nose. A fragment of her silver speech
tinkled in his ear:

"Oh, Wallie Banks! Bid pid s'ant have Bruvva Josie-Joe's dance 'less Joe
say so. Lola MUS' be fair. Wallie mustn't--"

"That's that Miss Pratt," observed Miss Boke, following William's gaze
with some interest. "You met her yet?"

"Yeh," said William.

"She's been visiting here all summer," Miss Boke informed him. "I was at
a little tea this afternoon, and some of the girls said this Miss Pratt
said she'd never DREAM of getting engaged to any man that didn't have
seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I don't know if it's true or
not, but I expect so. Anyway, they said they heard her say so."

William lifted his right hand from his ankle and passed it, time after
time, across his damp forehead. He did not believe that Miss Pratt could
have expressed herself in so mercenary a manner, but if she HAD--well,
one fact in British history had so impressed him that he remembered
it even after Examination: William Pitt, the younger, had been Prime
Minister of England at twenty-one.

If an Englishman could do a thing like that, surely a bright, energetic
young American needn't feel worried about seven hundred and fifty
thousand dollars! And although William, at seventeen, had seldom
possessed more than seven hundred and fifty cents, four long years must
pass, and much could be done, before he would reach the age at which
William Pitt attained the premiership--coincidentally a good, ripe,
marriageable age. Still, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars is
a stiffish order, even allowing four long years to fill it; and
undoubtedly Miss Boke's bit of gossip added somewhat to the already
sufficient anxie