is an infant
savage. Then you shall come back and give yourself in earnest to the
business of singing."

But Honor, scarlet-cheeked, shook her head. "I can't imagine coming back
from--from _that_, _Signorina_!" Her eyes envisaged it and the happy
color rose and rose in her face. "But I've got a good lesson for you
to-day! Shall I begin?"

"Begin, then, my good small one," said her teacher indulgently, "and for
the rest, we shall see what we shall see!"

Honor flung herself into her work as never before, and counted the weeks
and days and hours until the time when Jimsy should come to her, and
Jimsy, finishing up a sound, triumphant Sophomore year, saw everything
through a hazy front drop of his Skipper on the pier at Naples.

But Jimsy King did not go abroad with Mr. and Mrs. Lorimer, after all,
and Honor did not see him through the whole dragging summer. Stephen
Lorimer, sick with disappointment for his stepdaughter, would have
found relief in fixing the blame on his wife, for her lovely and
complacent face mirrored her satisfaction at the turn of events, but he
could hardly hold her responsible. James King was taken suddenly,
alarmingly ill with pneumonia two days before they left Los Angeles to
catch their steamer at New York, and it was manifestly impossible for
his son to leave him. The doctors gave scant hope of his recovery.

Therefore, it was Carter Van Meter who took Jimsy's ticket off his hands
and Jimsy's place in the party and the summer plans, leaving his happy
mother to spend three flutteringly hopeful months alone.

CHAPTER VIII

James King, greatly to the surprise of his physicians, did not die, but
he hovered on the brink of it for many thin weeks and his son gave up
his entire vacation to be with him. The letters he sent Honor were brief
bulletins of his father's condition, explosive regrets at having to give
up his summer with her, but Jimsy was not a letter writer. In order
properly to fill up more than a page it was necessary for him to be able
to say, "Had a bully practice to-day," or, "Saw old Duffy last night and
he told me all about--" He was not good at producing epistolary bulk out
of empty and idle days. Stephen Lorimer, often beside Honor when she
opened and read these messages in English Cathedral towns or beside
Scotch lakes, ached with sympathy for these young lovers under his
benevolent wing because of their inability to set themselves down on
paper. He knew that his step