, "I saw that name on one of the letters when I
picked up the packet from the grating of the boat."

She flushed.

"You mustn't think," he said earnestly, "that I tried to pry. If I'd
done that, I'd have found out the address at the same time. The name
just looked up at me, and I couldn't help seeing it."

His tone carried conviction, and she unbent.

"I can see how you made the mistake," she smiled. "The letter on top
of the packet was addressed to a very dear friend whose first name
happens to be the same as mine. She and I were great chums in boarding
school. The letter had been sent to her by a girl we both knew and who
had been traveling abroad, and as Ruth knew I would be interested in
it, she sent it on for me to read."

"That explains the foreign stamp," he commented.

"You noticed that too, did you?" she asked, flashing a mischievous
glance at him. "Really, you took in a lot at a single look. You ought
to be a detective."

"I wish I were," said Drew, as he thought ruefully of the unavailing
plans he had made to find her. "I'm afraid I'm a pretty bungling
amateur."

"Well, you were only half wrong, anyway," she answered. "The first
part of the name was right."

"Yes," he admitted. "But that didn't help me much. The last one
didn't either for that matter. There are so many Adamses in the city."

"How do you know?" she challenged.

He grew red. "I--I looked in the directory," he confessed.

She thought it high time to change the subject.

"I suppose it will be quite a wrench to say good-bye to your people
here," she remarked.

"I haven't any," replied Drew. "My father and my mother died when I
was small. The only brother I have is out West, and I haven't seen him
for years. I've been boarding since I came to the city, five years
ago."

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said with ready sympathy. "I know something of
how you feel, because I lost my own mother three years ago. I've been
in boarding school most of the time since then. So I know what it is
to be without a real home. Sometimes our only home was on shipboard."

"But it's always possible to make a real home," said Drew daringly.
Then he checked himself and bit his lip. That troublesome tongue of
his! When would he learn to control it?

She pretended not to have heard him.

"I have my father left," she went on; "and he's the best father in the
world."

"And the luckiest," put in Drew.

"He didn't want to take me on this