isance in his
sentimental insistence. Mr. Turner, watching her from afar, saw her
desert the calfly smitten one, and immediately dashed for the breach.
He had watched from too great a distance, however, for Billy Westlake
gobbled up Miss Josephine before Sam could get there, and started with
her for that inevitable stroll among the brookside paths which always
preceded a bowling tournament. While he stood nonplussed, looking
after them, Miss Hastings glided to his side in a matter of course way.

"Isn't it a perfectly charming evening?" she wanted to know.

"It is a regular dear of an evening," admitted Sam savagely.

In his single thoughtedness he was scrambling wildly about within the
interior of his skull for a pretext to get rid of Miss Hastings, but it
suddenly occurred to him that now he had a legitimate excuse for
following the receding couple, and promptly upon the birth of this
idea, he pulled in that direction and Miss Hastings came right along,
though a trifle silently. With all her vivacious chattering, she was
not without shrewdness, and with no trouble whatever she divined
precisely why Sam chose the path he did, and why he seemed in such
almost blundering haste. They _were_ a little late, it was true, for
just as they started, Billy and Miss Stevens turned aside and out of
sight into the shadiest and narrowest and most involved of the
shrubbery-lined paths, the one which circled about the little concealed
summer-house with a dove-cote on top, which was commonly dubbed "the
cooing place." Following down this path the rear couple suddenly came
upon a tableau which made them pause abruptly. Billy Westlake, upon
the steps of the summer-house, was upon his knees, there in the swiftly
blackening dusk, before the appalled Miss Stevens; actually upon his
knees! Silently the two watchers stole away, but when they were out of
earshot Miss Hastings tittered. Sam, though the moment was a serious
one for him, was also compelled to grin.

"I didn't know they did it that way any more," he confessed.

"They don't," Miss Hastings informed him; "that is, unless they are
very, very young, or very, very old."

"Apparently you've had experience," observed Sam.

"Yes," she admitted a little bitterly. "I think I've had rather more
than my share; but all with ineligibles."

Sam felt a trace of pity for Miss Hastings, who was of polite family,
but poor, and a guest of the Westlakes, but he scarcely knew how to
e