some of the Cherryvale ladies are a little disappointed."

"Oh, that!" Missy felt a hot flame of indignation flare up inside her.
"He wouldn't act that way! anybody could tell. I think it's a crime to
talk so about him!"

Father gave another chuckle, very low; but Missy was too engrossed with
her resentment and with other vague, jumbled emotions to notice it.

That night she had difficulty in getting to sleep. And, for the first
time in weeks, visions of Commencement failed to waft her off to dreams.
She was hearing over and over, in a kind of lullaby, a deep, melodious
voice: "Your daughter?--you're a man to be envied, sir!"--was seeing a
pair of dark bright eyes, smiling into her own with a beam of kinship
ineffable.

Next day, at school, she must listen to an aftermath of gossipy surmise
anent the disappointing osculatory hero. At last she could stand it no
longer.

"I think it's horrid to talk that way! Anybody can see he's not that
kind of man!"

Raymond Bonner stared.

"Why, I thought you said he was disgusting!"

But Missy, giving him a withering look, turned and walked away, leaving
him to ponder the baffling contrarieties of the feminine sex.

A new form of listlessness now took hold of Missy. That afternoon she
didn't want to study, didn't want to go over to Kitty Allen's when her
friend telephoned, didn't even want to work on hats; this last was
a curious turn, indeed, and to a wise observer might have been
significant. She had only a desire to be alone, and was grateful for
the excuse her thesis provided her; though it must be admitted precious
little was inscribed, that bright May afternoon, on the patient tablet
which kept Missy company in the summerhouse.

At supper, while the talk pivoted inevitably round the departed Dobson,
she sat immersed in preoccupation so deep as to be conspicuous even in
Missy. Aunt Nettie, smiling, once started to make a comment but, unseen
by his dreaming daughter, was silenced by Mr. Merriam. And immediately
after the meal she'd eaten without seeing, the faithful tablet again in
hand, Missy wandered back to the summer-house.

It was simply heavenly out there now. The whole western sky clear to the
zenith was laid over with a solid colour of opaque saffron rose; and,
almost halfway up and a little to the left, in exactly the right place,
of deepest turquoise blue, rested one mountain of cloud; it was the
shape of Fujiyama, the sacred mount of Japan, which was pictu