lly apologetic Olive.

"Mr. Brenton?" she said, with a slight lift, as of question, in her
voice. "Really, I am so penitent at the message I am bringing you. The
maid told me you were here. Then, after a while, she came back again
and told me she couldn't find my father anywhere."

With a courteous little gesture, Brenton interrupted her apology and
half rose from his chair.

"Really, it's not at all a matter for apology, Miss Keltridge. I can
come again, some other day. Your father is a busy man, I know."

But Olive stayed him with scanty ceremony.

"No; wait, Mr. Brenton. I hadn't finished my tale. Besides, when you
have lived in town a little longer, you'll know that nobody ever does
apologize for my father; we all revel in his dear old absurdities. Sit
down, please. He will be here before very long."

Brenton did sit down, the while he suppressed a vague question regarding
the filial nature of the word _absurdities_. Then he yielded to the
merriment in Olive's eyes, and laughed outright and boyishly.

"I've heard something of the sort already, Miss Keltridge," he
confessed. "What was it, this time?"

For an instant, Olive paused, astonished at the change which had come
over her companion. His clerical veneer had fallen from him; the man
beneath was singularly human, likable, and as simple as Dolph Dennison
himself.

"This time? I went to see, went to the laboratory, though the maid had
told me he wasn't in there. She had knocked twice; then she had opened
the door to look in. At first, I agreed with her. Then I heard a little
noise, over in a corner behind the table. There on the floor, the flat
floor, sat my father, sixty-five years old. His hair was all on end,
and his cheek was smudged with something yellow, and he was as happy as
a baby in a sand pile. Doing?" Olive made a helpless little gesture.
"How should I know? I'm no student of germs. He had a row of glass pans
in front of him, with hideous messes in them, and he appeared to be
sounding the depths of iniquity in them with a small glass divining
rod."

Then their eyes met above the finished story, and together the two of
them burst out laughing, like a pair of merry children.

"You think he will become visible, in course of time?" Brenton asked
her.

She shook her head, as she laughed again.

"I trust so, Mr. Brenton; but, of course, nobody ever can predict. He
knows you are here. At least," swiftly she amended her phrase; "he did
know it.