daughter was very nearly as limited as the
boy.

"Ethel," he said to Miss Bruce-Drummond who had met up with them for a
week-end at Stirling, "those poor children are so pitifully what Gelett
Burgess calls 'the gagged and wordless folk'; it would be so much
easier--and safer--for them if they belonged to his 'caste of the
articulate.'"

She nodded. "Yes. It's rather frightful, really, to separate people who
have no means of communication. Especially when--" she broke off,
looking at Carter who was pointing out to Honor what he believed to be
the Field of Bannockburn.

Stephen Lorimer shook his head. "No danger there," he said comfortably.
"Top Step is sorry for him--a creature of another, paler world ...
infinitely beneath her bright and beamish boy's. No, I feel a lot safer
to have Carter with her than with Jimsy King."

The Englishwoman stared. "Really?"

"Yes. I daresay I exaggerate, but I've always seen something sinister
about that youth."

Miss Bruce-Drummond looked at Carter Van Meter and observed the way in
which he was looking at Honor. "He wants her frightfully, doesn't he,
poor thing?"

"He wants her frightfully but he isn't a poor thing in the very least.
He is an almost uncannily clever and subtle young person for his years,
with a very large income and a fanatically devoted mother behind him,
and he's had everything he ever wanted all his life except physical
perfection,--and my good Top Step."

"Ah, yes, but what can he do, after all?"

Honor's stepfather shrugged. "He knows that she would not be allowed to
marry the lad if he went the way of the other 'Wild Kings,'--that she is
too sound and sane to insist on it. And I think--I thought even in their
High School days--that he deliberately steers Jimsy into danger."

"My word!" said the novelist, hotly. "What are you going to do about it,
Stephen?"

"Watch. Wait. Stand ready. I shall make it my business to drop in at the
fraternity house once or twice next season, when I go north to San
Francisco,--and into other fraternity houses, and put my ear to the
ground. And if I find what I fear to find I'll take it up with both the
lads, face to face, and then I'll send for Honor."

"Right!" said Miss Bruce-Drummond, her fine, fresh-colored face glowing.
"And I'll run down to Florence at the Christmas holidays and take her to
Rome with me, shall I?"

"It will be corking of you, Ethel."

"I shall love doing it."

He looked at her appreciatively