tion;--he seemed to be standing in a shower of flowers.

"Don't you see it, Ramsey?" Milla whispered. "It's a great big one. Why,
it must be as long as--as your shoe! Look!"

Ramsey saw nothing but the thick round curl on Milla's shoulder. Milla
had a group of curls on each of her shoulders, for she got her modes at
the Movies and had that sort of prettiness: large, gentle, calculating
eyes, and a full, softly modelled face, implacably sweet. Ramsey was
accustomed to all this charm, and Milla had never before been of more
importance to him than an equal weight of school furniture--but all at
once some magic had enveloped her. That curl upon the shoulder
nearest him was shot with dazzling fibres of sunshine. He seemed to be
trembling.

"I don't see it," he murmured, huskily, afraid that she might remove her
hand. "I can't see any fish, Milla."

She leaned farther out over the bank. "Why, there, goosie!" she
whispered. "Right there."

"I can't see it."

She leaned still farther, bending down to point. "Why right th--"

At this moment she removed her hand from his shoulder, though
unwillingly. She clutched at him, in fact, but without avail. She had
been too amiable.

A loud shriek was uttered by throats abler to vocalize, just then, than
Milla's, for in her great surprise she said nothing whatever--the shriek
came from the other girls as Milla left the crest of the overhanging
bank and almost horizontally disappeared into the brown water. There
was a tumultuous splash, and then of Milla Rust and her well-known
beautifulness there was nothing visible in the superficial world, nor
upon the surface of that creek. The vanishment was total.

"_Save_ her!"

Several girls afterward admitted having used this expression, and little
Miss Floy Williams, the youngest and smallest member of the class, was
unable to deny that she had said, "Oh, God!" Nothing could have been
more natural, and the matter need not have been brought before her with
such insistence and frequency, during the two remaining years of her
undergraduate career.

Ramsey was one of those who heard this exclamation, later so famous,
and perhaps it was what roused him to heroism. He dived from the bank,
headlong, and the strange thought in his mind was "I guess _this_'ll
show Dora Yocum!" He should have been thinking of Milla, of course, at
such a time, particularly after the little enchantment just laid upon
him by Milla's touch and Milla's curls; and