men. On the other side of me from Miss Midland usually
sits an old German, grubbing away at Sanskrit roots. The other day
we got into talk in the little lunchroom here in the same building
with the library, where all we readers go to feed, and he made me
so mad I couldn't digest my bread and milk. Once, just once, when
he was real young, he met an American woman student--a regular P.
G. freak, I gather--and nothing will convince him that all American
girls aren't like her. 'May God forgive Christopher Columbus!' he
groans whenever he thinks of her...."

There was no more in this letter about his English neighbor, but in the
next, written a week later, he said:

"We've struck up an acquaintance, the discouraged-looking English
girl and I, and she isn't so frozen-up as she seems. This is how it
happened. I told you about the little lunchroom where the readers
from the library get their noonday feed. Well, a day or so ago I
was sitting at the next table to her, and when she'd finished
eating and felt for her purse, I saw her get pale, and I knew right
off she'd lost her money. 'If you'll excuse me, Miss Midland,' I
said, 'I'll be glad to loan you a little. My name is Harrison,
Peter Harrison, and I usually sit next you in the reading-room.'
Say, Maggie, you don't know how queerly she looked at me. I can't
tell you what her expression was like, for I couldn't make head or
tail out of it. It was like looking at a Hebrew book that you don't
know whether to read backward or forward. She got whiter, and drew
away and said something about 'No! No! she couldn't think----' But
there stood the waiter with his hand out. I couldn't stop to figure
out if she was mad or scared. I said 'Look-y-here, Miss Midland,
I'm an American--here's my card--I just want to help you out,
that's all. You needn't be afraid I'll bother you any.' And with
that I asked the waiter how much it was, paid him, and went out for
my usual half-hour constitutional in the little park opposite the
library.

"When I went back to the reading-room, she was there in the seat
next me, all right, but my, wasn't she buried in a big folio! She's
studying in some kind of old music-books. You would have laughed to
see how she didn't know I existed. I forgot all about her till
closing-up time, but when I got out in the court a little ahead