s more," Dick called, and dashed through the hand.

He won the game and the rubber, but he had reduced his partner to a
state of frigidity excelling even Miss Wood's. "We won't play any more,"
she said to that lady, "I know you are tired at our noise." And with a
general good-night she went out of the room, leaving the box of candy
behind her.

Miss Wood added the score conscientiously, pronounced her partner and
herself the winners, professed indignation at Dick's offer to pay
anything he might owe, and, accompanied by Mrs. Pickens, left the young
man to himself.

Richard Shelby Brown looked across the table at the empty chair and
deliberately kicked himself. "What a mutt I am," he thought. "But if she
were a princess, born with a lot of knights bowing before her all day
long, she couldn't hold her head any higher." Then he pulled the cigar
that Mr. Talbert had given him out of his pocket, struck a light and
began to smoke. And as he sniffed the delicious fragrance and blew rings
into the air, as he looked about the room at the bright pictures all
descriptive of gaiety and happiness, he grew less disturbed and
gradually regained his self-possession. One could never tell what a girl
liked, but surely she must find it pleasant to know that a man wanted to
kiss her. Had she slapped him on the face, as Annie-Lou would have done,
he would not have minded. But she had blushed, and, oh how beautiful she
became when the color rushed into her face! Tilted back in one chair,
his feet on another, he puffed at his cigar and puffed again, and smiled
gently, thinking of the princess in her room and of the palace that he
must hasten to build.

CHAPTER XXVI

There was no question that Hertha Ogilvie was not making a success at
stenography and typewriting at the excellent school which Dick had found
for her. Among the thirty-odd pupils who had entered in February, only
two were as far behind as she. And though her teachers, who liked her
for her good manners and quiet speech, were ready with encouragement,
assuring her that the moment would come when, with unexpected rapidity,
the light of understanding would shine amid the darkness of
insignificant lines and dots and she would forge ahead, she herself did
not believe in the miracle. This was perhaps her greatest
handicap--distrust in her ability blocked her road. An ever recurring
sense of stupidity kept her repeating the same tasks without progress,
until, filled with d