And so, out in the night, Noble was seated
upon the top of the side fence, looking through the library window at
Mr. Atwater.

After a while Noble lit another Orduma cigarette and puffed strongly to
start it. The smoke was almost invisible in the moonlight, but the night
breeze, stirring gently, wafted it toward the house, where the open
window made an inward draft and carried it heartily about the library.

Noble was surprised to see Mr. Atwater rise suddenly to his feet. He
smote his brow, put out the light, and stamped upstairs to his own room.

His purpose to retire was understood when the watcher saw a light in the
bedroom window overhead. Noble thought of the good, peculiar old man
now disrobing there, and he smiled to himself at a whimsical thought:
What form would Mr. Atwater's embarrassment take, what would be his
feeling, and what would he do, if he knew that Noble was there now,
beneath his window and thinking of him?

In the moonlight Noble sat upon the fence, and smoked Orduma cigarettes,
and looked up with affection at the bright window of Mr. Atwater's
bedchamber. Abruptly the light in that window went out.

"Saying his prayers now," said Noble. "I wonder if----" But, not to be
vain, he laughed at himself and left the thought unfinished.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A week later, on a hot July afternoon, Miss Florence Atwater, recovered
from her cold, stood in the shady back yard of her place of residence
and yawned more extensively than any one would have believed possible,
judging by her face in repose. Three of her friends, congenial in age
and sex, were out of town for the summer; two had been ascertained, by
telephonic inquiries, to be taking commanded siestas; and neither the
other one nor Florence had yet forgotten that yesterday, although they
were too religious to commit themselves to a refusal to meet as sisters
in the Great Beyond, they had taken the expurgated oath that by
Everything they would never speak to each other again so long as they
both should live.

Florence was at the end of her resources. She had sought distraction in
experimental cookery; but, having scorched a finger, and having been
told by the cook that a person's own kitchen wasn't worth the price at
eleven dollars a week if it had to git all smelled up with broiled
rubber when the femometer stood at ninety-sevvum degrees in the shade,
the experimenter abusedly turned her back on the morose woman and went
out to the back