hour for the next train to New York. Jimmy himself was
occupied in jotting down notes on an old envelope.

"If it makes me laugh, I should think it would make them," he chuckled
to himself.

CHAPTER X.

THE POLITE FREEZE-OUT.

They had seen the cloisters and the library and the Hall of Science and
all the show places at Wellington, and now Miss Julia Kean and Mr. James
Lufton might be seen strolling across the campus in the direction of the
lake.

It was one of those hazy, mid-autumnal days, neither cold nor hot; a
blue mist clothed the fields and hung like a canopy between sun and
earth.

Judy had changed her best velvet for a walking skirt and a red sweater
and Jimmy Lufton glanced at her with admiration from time to time.

"It's a mighty becoming way of dressing you young ladies have here," he
said. "Those sweaters and tam o' shanters are prettier to me than the
fittest clothes on Fifth Avenue."

"Then you don't agree with Miss Slammer?" asked Judy.

"I probably don't, but, as it happens, I never asked her opinion."

"You don't know what Miss Slammer thinks of college girls, the way they
dress and talk?"

Jimmy hesitated. As a matter of fact he had never seen the libelous
article by Miss Slammer. He had been absent in a remote village in the
mountains writing a murder trial when the article had appeared.
Therefore he was not suspicious of Judy's unexpected question.

"I can tell you what I think of college girls," he went on as they
neared the edge of the lake. "I think they are the jolliest, most
natural, interesting, wholesome, best looking, companionable----"

Judy began to blush. He was looking straight at her as he delivered
himself of this stream of adjectives.

"Would you like to canoe a little?" she asked, changing the subject.

"Would I," exclaimed Jimmy, with the sudden boyish expression that made
his face so attractive. "I should rather think I would. I haven't had
the chance to paddle a canoe since I left college."

It was just the day for canoeing. The surface of the lake was as smooth
as glass except where the paddles of other canoeists stirred its placid
surface into little ripples and miniature waves.

Judy thought it would be nice, too. She was enjoying herself immensely
with this lecturer who looked like a boy without any of a boy's
diffidence.

"Do you lecture often?" she asked, when they had settled themselves in
the canoe and he was paddling with a skill she recogn