ow
Alice, and this year Frieda Lange is coming to America to school and she
is going to Dexter, too. Hannah is coming out for a few weeks' visit
here before college opens, and I'm going to try to get Alice at the same
time, for we've never all four been together. I am so eager about it
that I can't keep my mind on anything else very long, so that's why I
said 'Wide Awake Girls in Winsted' aloud. Isn't it an interesting
story?"

"Coincidences are always interesting," said Algernon. "And I think a
great many things that go by the name of telepathy are nothing more. I'm
keeping a record of peculiar coincidences that come under my notice.
I'll put these down, about the two happening to go to the same college,
and about the German and American girls finding their mothers were
acquainted." He produced a note-book to make an entry.

"You can't include the last one," Catherine protested. "It was because
Mrs. Lange recognized Hannah from the letter that Frieda wrote. But the
meeting between Alice and Hannah was mere chance."

Algernon closed his note-book and went placidly on as if Catherine's
story had not interrupted him:

"As I was saying, those men in Pittsburg--"

The telephone bell rang and Catherine went into the house to answer it.

"I'll have to be excused, Algernon," she said, coming back a minute
later. "Father wants something of me. You can tell me the rest another
time."

Then, as Algernon slowly got off the porch, she added impulsively:

"I marvel just to see you walk, Algernon. You know so very much! You
seem to me to be a veritable walking library."

Algernon twisted his body uncomfortably and flushed.

"I'd be more use to Winsted if I were a real one," he said, with a
wistful sound in his voice that made Catherine look at him sharply. She
waved him a smiling good-by as he went down the walk, and then turned to
her father's desk to look up some papers he wanted. Her mind, however,
still dwelt on that unexpected shade in Algernon's tone.

"I've thought of him as a mere talking machine instead of a human
being," she said to herself reproachfully. "I must make a salmon scallop
for Father's supper. Inga doesn't know how to do anything but scramble
eggs and boil potatoes, and Father's tired, I know by his voice. It
sounded tired, but Algernon's was lonely. I wonder--"

Dr. Harlow Smith and his wife, Dr. Helen, drove up to their pretty
gabled house on the hill slope a few minutes later, their faces lighti