l,
saying she had not a minute to spare, as she had to meet her father,
who would not wait, readjusted her wraps, kissed Miss Felicia on both
cheeks, sent another flying through the air toward Peter from the tips
of her fingers, and with Jack as escort--he also had to see a friend who
would not wait a minute--danced out of the room and so on down to the
street.

The Scribe will not follow them very far in their walk uptown. Both were
very happy, Jack because the scandal he had been dreading, since he had
last looked into her eyes, had escaped her ears, and Ruth because of all
the young men she had met in her brief sojourn in New York this young
Mr. Breen treated her with most consideration.

While the two were making their way through the crowded streets, Jack
helping her over the crossings, picking out the drier spots for her
dainty feet to step upon, shielding her from the polluting touch of the
passing throng, Miss Felicia had resumed her sewing--it was a bit of
lace that needed a stitch here and there--and Peter, dragging a chair
before the fire, had thrown himself into its depths, his long, thin
white fingers open fan-like to its blaze.

"You are just wasting your time, Peter, over that young man," Miss
Felicia said at last, snipping the end of a thread with her scissors.
"Better buy him a guitar with a broad blue ribbon and start him off
troubadouring, or, better still, put him into a suit of tin armor and
give him a lance. He doesn't belong to this world. It's just as well
Ruth did not hear that rigmarole. Charming manners, I admit--lovely,
sitting on a cushion looking up into some young girl's eyes, but he will
never make his way here with those notions. Why he should want to anger
his uncle, who is certainly most kind to him, is past finding out. He's
stupid, that's what he is--just stupid!"--to break with your bread
and butter and to defy those who could be of service to you being an
unpardonable sin with Miss Felicia. No, he would not do at all for Ruth.

Peter settled himself deeper in his chair and studied the cheery blaze
between his outspread fingers.

"That's the very thing will save him, Felicia."

"What--his manners?"

"No--his adorable stupidity. I grant you he's fighting windmills, but,
then, my dear, don't forget that he's FIGHTING--that's something."

"But they are only windmills, and, more extraordinary still, this one is
grinding corn to keep him from starving," and she folded up her sew