g abruptly,
but one would suppose you had travelled and enjoyed many advantages that
you certainly could not have here."

"You greatly overestimate me, Mr. Williams. I have only a poor
smattering of knowledge which I absorbed from two friends who are really
educated men,--Mr. Little and Dic--Mr. Bright!"

"Are they old--elderly men?" asked Williams.

"One is," responded Rita.

"Which one?" he asked.

"Mr. Little."

"And the other--Mr. Bright--is he young?" asked the inquisitive
Bostonian. There was no need for Rita to answer in words. The color in
her cheeks and the radiance of her eyes told plainly enough that Mr.
Bright _was_ young. But she replied with a poor assumption of
indifference:--

"I think he is nearly five years older than I." There was another
betrayal of an interesting fact. She measured his age by hers.

"And that would make him--?" queried Williams.

"Twenty-two--nearly."

"Are you but seventeen?" he asked. Rita nodded her head and answered:--

"Shamefully young, isn't it? I used to be sensitive about my extreme
youth and am still a little so, but--but it can't be helped." Williams
laughed, and thought he had never met so charming a girl.

"Yes," he answered, "it is more or less a disgrace to be so young, but
it is a fault easily overlooked." He paused for a moment while he
inspected the heavens, and continued, still studying astronomy: "I mean
it is not easily overlooked in some cases. Sometimes it is 'a monster of
such awful mien' that one wishes to jump clear over the enduring and the
pitying, and longs to embrace."

"We often see beautiful sunsets from this porch," answered Rita, "and I
believe one is forming now." There was not a society lady in Boston who
could have handled the situation more skilfully; and Williams learned
that if he would flatter this young girl of the wilderness, he must
first serve his probation. She did not desire his flattery, and gave him
to understand as much at the outset. She found him interesting and
admired him. He was the first man of his type she had ever met. In the
matter of education he was probably not far in advance of Dic, and
certainly was very far arrear of Billy Little. But he had a certain
polish which comes only from city life. Billy had that polish, but it
was of the last generation, was very English, and had been somewhat
dimmed by friction with the unpolished surfaces about him. Dic's polish
was that of a rare natural wood.

As a resu