firm outlines; her hands were long and slender and had known vigorous service with racket and driver.

[Pg 32]

Porter was full of a scheme for planting a line of poplars around some lots, which, it seemed, he owned in another part of the town; but he dropped this during a prolonged absence of the waitress from the room, to ask where the girl had gone and whether there was going to be any more dinner.

"It's bad enough, child, for us to forget we've got a guest for dinner, but we needn't rub it in by starving him after he's at the table."

"There is food out there, father, if you'll abide in patience. This is a new girl and she's pretty green. She let Mr. Saxton in and then forgot to tell anybody he'd come." She wished to touch on this, without recurring to the awkward plight in which Saxton had been placed; and John now seized the chance to minimize it so that the incident might be closed.

"Oh, it was very flattering to me! She left me alone with an air that implied my familiar acquaintance with the house. It was much kinder than asking for credentials."

"You're not hard enough on these people, Evelyn," declared Porter. "That's something they didn't teach you at college. If you let the impression get out that you're easy, you'll never make a housekeeper. Fire[Pg 33] them! fire them whenever you find they're no good!" He looked to Saxton for corroboration, with a severe air, as if this were something that masculine minds understood but which was beyond the reach of women.

[Pg 33]

When all were served he grew abstracted as he ate, and Saxton appealed to his hostess, as one college graduate may appeal to another, along the line of their college experiences. They had, it appeared, several acquaintances in common, and Saxon recalled that some of his classmates had often visited the college in which Miss Porter had been a student; and a little of the old ache crept into his heart as he remembered the ways in which the social side of college life had meant so much less to him than to most of the men he knew; but as she talked freely of her own experience, he found that her humor was contagious, and he even fell so far under its spell as to recount anecdotes of his own student life in which his part had not been heroic. Porter came back occasionally from the land of his commercial dreams, and they all laughed together at the climaxes. He presently directed the talk to the cattle business.

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