r me!" cried Harrison, gaily, getting to his feet. "You'll make me
think you are a hardened cynic. Well, if you believe me, _that's_ all
right! And now, come on, let's walk a little, and you tell me why
English people treat their girls so differently from their boys. You
are a perfect gold mine of information to me, do you know it?"

"But I've always taken for granted most of the things you find so queer
about our ways. I thought that was the way they were, don't you see, by
the nature of things."

"_Aha_!" he said triumphantly. "You see another good of traveling! It
stirs a person up. If you can give me a lot of new facts, maybe I can
pay you back by giving you some new ideas."

"I think," said Miss Midland, with a soft energy, "I think you can,
indeed."

IV

A week after this was the first of April, and when Harrison, as was his
wont, reached the reading-room a little before the opening hour, he
found a notice on the door to the effect that the fall of some
plastering from a ceiling necessitated the closing of the reading-room
for that day. A week of daily lunches and talks with Miss Midland had
given him the habit of communicating his ideas to her, and he waited
inside the vestibule for her to appear. He happened thus, as he had not
before, to see her arrival. Accompanied by an elderly person in black,
who looked, even to Harrison's inexperienced eyes, like a maid-servant,
she came rapidly in through the archway which led from the street to
the court. Here, halting a moment, she dismissed her attendant with a
gesture, and, quite unconscious of the young man's gaze upon her,
crossed the court diagonally with a free, graceful step. Observing her
thus at his leisure, Harrison was moved to the first and almost the
last personal comment upon his new friend. He did not as a rule notice
very keenly the outward aspect of his associates. "Well, by gracious,"
he said to himself, "if she's not quite a good-looker!--or would be if
she had money or gumption enough to put on a little more style!"

He took a sudden resolution and, meeting her at the foot of the steps,
laid his plan enthusiastically before her. It took her breath away.
"Oh, no, I _couldn't_," she exclaimed, looking about her helplessly as
if foreseeing already that she would yield. "What would people----?"

"Nobody would say a thing, because nobody would know about it. We could
go and get back here by the usual closing time, so that whoever comes
for you w