rchie did not at once detach Miss Perry from the innumerable host of
young women his sister had introduced him to; they were a hazy composite
in his memory, but when Mrs. Featherstone insisted that he couldn't have
forgotten Miss Perry's smile and merry laugh, he promptly declared that
he remembered her perfectly. When he found himself sitting beside her
later at Mrs. Featherstone's table, with a lady on his right who was
undoubtedly most distinguished in spite of the fact that he failed to
catch her name and understood very little of her rapid French, he was
very grateful for Miss Perry's propinquity. The smile and the laugh were
both better even than Mrs. Featherstone's specifications, and her
English had a refreshing Western tang and raciness that pleased him.

"I passed you on the street the other day and made frantic efforts to
attract your attention but you were in a trance and failed to see my
signals."

"I was taking my walk," he stammered.

"'_My_ walk!'" she repeated. "You speak as though you had a monopoly of
that form of exercise. I must say you didn't appear to be enjoying
yourself. Your aspect was wholly funereal and your demeanor that of a
man with a certain number of miles wished on him."

"Four a day," Archie confessed with an air of resignation; "two in the
morning and two before dinner."

"Then you were doing your morning lap when I passed you. Only four miles
a day?"

"By the doctor's orders," he assented with the wistful smile that
usually evoked sympathetic murmurs in feminine auditors.

"Oh, the doctors!" remarked the girl as though she had no great opinion
of doctors in general or of Mr. Bennett's medical advisers in
particular. He was used to a great deal of sympathy and he was convinced
that Miss Perry was an utterly unsympathetic person.

"What would you call a good walk?" he asked a little tartly.

"Oh, ten, twenty, thirty! I've done fifteen and gone to a dance at the
end of the tramp."

"But you haven't my handicap," he protested defensively. "You can't be
very gay about walking when you're warned that excessive fatigue may
have disastrous consequences!"

She was not wholly without feeling for her face grew grave for a moment
and she met his eyes searchingly, with something of the professional
scrutiny to which he had long been accustomed.

"Eyes clear; color very good; voice a trifle weak and suggesting
timidity and feeble initiative. Introspective; a little self-conscious,
a