speaking the room was quiet. Armstrong still
sat staring at the ceiling; but the smile had left his lips. The girl was
watching the visitor frankly, the tiny pucker, that meant concentration,
between her eyebrows. Roberts himself broke the silence.

"You've heard my definition, Miss Gleason," he laughed; "and no doubt
think me a savage or something of that kind. I shan't attempt to deny it
if you do either. Just as a matter of curiosity and of interest, though,
so long as the subject is up, I'd like to hear your own definition." Of a
sudden he remembered. "And yours, too, Armstrong," he added.

The wrinkle vanished from the girl's forehead. She smiled in turn. An
observer might have said she sparred for time. "After you, Steve," she
accepted.

Armstrong shifted in his seat elaborately.

"This is indeed a bit sudden," he remarked in whimsical commonplace,
"however--" His hands went into his pockets automatically. His eyes
followed a seam on the paper overhead back and forth, before halting
preparatorily.

"Pleasure with me," he began, "is not practical, but very much the
reverse." His lips twitched humorously. "Neither has it reference to any
superior power. I wouldn't give one single round penny, providing I had
it, to be able to whistle and have a thousand of my fellows dance to the
tune--against their wishes. If I could whistle so sweetly or so
enchantingly that they'd caper nimbly because they wanted to, because the
contagion was irresistible, then--" The whimsical look passed as suddenly
as it had come. "Pleasure with me, I think," he continued soberly, "means
appreciation by my fellow-men, in big things and in little things. I'm a
kind of sunflower, and that is my sun. I'd like to be able to play
marbles so well that the kids would stare in amazement; to fashion such
entrancing mud pies that the little girls would want to eat them; to play
ball so cleverly that the boys would always choose me first in making up
sides; to dance so divinely that the girls would dream about it
afterward; to tell so entertaining a story that men would let their
cigars go dead while they listened, or under different circumstances the
ladies would split their gloves applauding--if they happened to have them
on; last of all, to write a novel so different and interesting that the
reading public, and that means every one, would look on the cover after
they'd turned the last sheet to see who the deuce did it; then trim the
lamp afresh,