lking, talking, and it was difficult
for her preoccupied mind to find the right answer in the right place.
He was talking about the celebrity who was to give the "Lyceum Course"
lecture that evening. The lecturer's name was Dobson. Oh uninspiring
name!--Ridgeley Holman Dobson. He was a celebrity because he'd done
something-or-other heroic in the Spanish war. Missy didn't know just
what it was, not being particularly interested in newspapers and current
events, and remote things that didn't matter. But Raymond evidently knew
something about Dobson aside from his being just prominent.

"I only hope he kisses old Miss Lightner!" he said, chortling.

"Kisses her?" repeated Missy, roused from her reveries. Why on earth
should a lecturer kiss anybody, above all Miss Lightner, who was an
old maid and not attractive despite local gossip about her being
"man-crazy"? "Why would he kiss Miss Lightner?"

Raymond looked at her in astonishment.

"Why, haven't you heard about him?"

Missy shook her head.

"Why, he's always in the papers! Everywhere he goes, women knock each
other down to kiss him! The papers are full of it--don't say you've
never heard of it!"

But Missy shook her head again, an expression of distaste on her face.
A man that let women knock each other down to kiss him! Missy had ideals
about kissing. She had never been kissed by any one but her immediate
relatives and some of her girl friends, but she had her dreams of
kisses--kisses such as the poets wrote about. Kissing was something
fine, beautiful, sacred! As sacred as getting married. But there was
nothing sacred about kissing whole bunches of people who knocked each
other down--people you didn't even know. Missy felt a surge of revulsion
against this Dobson who could so profane a holy thing.

"I think it's disgusting," she said.

At the unexpected harshness of her tone Raymond glanced at her in some
surprise.

"And they call him a hero!" she went on scathingly. "Oh, I guess he's
all right," replied Raymond, who was secretly much impressed by the dash
of Dobson. "It's just that women make fools of themselves over him."

"You mean he makes a fool of himself! I think he's disgusting. I
wouldn't go to hear him speak for worlds!"

Raymond wisely changed the subject. And Missy soon enough forgot the
disgusting Dobson in the press of nearer trials. She must get at that
outline; she wanted to do it, and yet she shrank from beginning. As
often happens when