smart equipage drew up before the office
door; and a moment later he was at the curb, bareheaded, offering to
help the daughter of men out of the robe wrappings.

"Perhaps I'd better not get out," she said. "Duke doesn't stand well.
Can I see Mr. Edward Raymer for a minute or two?"

Raymer bowed and blushed a little. He knew her so well, by eye-intimacy
at least, that he had been sure she knew him in the same way--as indeed
she did.

"I--that is my name. What can I do for you, Miss Grierson?"

"Oh, _thank_ you," she burst out, with exactly the proper shade of
impulsiveness. "Do you know, I was really afraid I might have to
introduce myself? I----"

The interruption was of Raymer's making. One of his employees appearing
opportunely, he sent the man to the horse's head, and once more held out
his hands to Miss Grierson.

"You must come in and get warm," he insisted. "I am sure you have found
it very cold driving this morning. Let me help you."

She made a driver's hitch in the reins and let him lift her to the
sidewalk. The ease with which he did it gave her a pleasant little
thrill of the sort that comes with the realization of a thing hoped for.
When she was not too busy with the social triumphs, strength, manly
strength, was a passion with Miss Grierson.

Raymer held the office door open for her, and in the grimy little den
which had been his father's before him, placed a chair for her at the
desk-end.

"Now you can tell me in comfort what I can do for you," he said,
bridging the interruption.

"Oh, it's only a little thing. I came to see you about renting a pew in
St. John's; that is our church, you know."

Raymer did not know, but he was politic enough not to say so.

"I am quite at your service," he hastened to say. "Shall I show you a
plan of the sittings?"

She protested prettily that it wasn't at all necessary; that any
assignment agreeable to him and least subversive of the rights and
preferences of others would be quite satisfactory. But he got out the
blue-print plan and dusted it, and in the putting together of heads over
it many miles in the gap of unacquaintance were safely and swiftly flung
to the rear.

When the sittings were finally decided upon she opened her purse.

"It is so good of you to take time from your business to wait on me,"
she told him; and then, in naive confusion: "I--I asked poppa to make
out a check, but I don't know whether it is big enough."

Raymer took the orde