ning----"

"How soon may I come?" he asked.

"Immediately after chapel."

LXXII.

MY GOOD GRACIOUS, MISS BARB

"Good-by," said Fair, with an ardent last look.

"Good-by," softly echoed Barbara, with eyelids down, and passed in.

According to a habit contracted since coming to college she took a brief
glimpse of the hat-rack to see if it held any other than girls' hats.
Not that she expected any visitor of the sort that can't wear that kind,
but--you know how it is--the unexpected does sometimes call. Besides,
Mr. Fair had told her whom he was to meet in Springfield next day. But
the hat-rack said no. Nevertheless she glanced also into the tiny
parlor. The widow sat there alone, reading the _Congregationalist_. She
looked up with sweet surprise, and Barbara, not giving her time to
speak, said:

"The woods are so per-fect-ly fas-ci-nat-ing I'm neg-lect-ing my
cor-re-spond-ence."

She dangled her hat at her knee and slowly mounted to her room, humming
a dance, but longing, as some sick wild thing, for a seclusion she had
no hope to find.

The two college mates who had driven with her in the morning were
lolling on her bed. They recognized the earliness of her return by a
mischievous sparkle of eyes which only gathered emphasis from the
absence of any open comment.

"Barbara," said one, as she doubled a pillow under her neck and took on
the Southern drawl, "par-don my in-quis-i-tive-ness, but if it isn't an
im-per-ti-nent ques-tion--or even if it is--how man-y but-ter-cups did
you pro-cure, and alas! where are they now?"

"Heaow?" softly asked Barbara. But the other school-fellow cried:

"Barbara, dear, don't you notice that girl, she's bad. I'll give you a
nice, easy question. I ask merely for information. Of course you're not
bound to answer unless you choose----"

"I want to know!" murmured Miss Garnet.

"Of course you do; you don't want to criminate yourself when you haven't
got to.

"And now, Miss Garnet--if that is still your name----"

"Don't call me Miss Garnet," said Barbara, with her chin in her hands,
"call me honey."

"Honey," came the response, "where's our 'Herrick'?"

Barbara sprang to her feet with a gasp and vacancy of eye that filled
the room with the laughter of her companions, and the next moment was
speeding down the stairs and across the doorstep, crowding her hat on
with one hand and stabbing it with the other as she went. Down from the
streets into the wood she haste