a dormitory, occupied by sophomores." 

"And who presented that?" his companion inquired, gazing 15 respectfully at the end of his stick. 

15

"I do not know," he informed her briefly. 

"Oh, you do not know," she repeated in her low voice. Something in the falling inflection caused her guide to wriggle uneasily. 

"Nobody knows," he added, rashly. "I should think nobody would want to, it is so hideous." 

"To be sure," she said. "And sophomores live there. Are you perhaps a sophomore, Mr. Tony?" 

"I?" Antony exclaimed; then in level tones, "I am a senior." 

"Really!" she murmured. "I suppose that means that you are one of the older pupils, then? In the first class?" 

"It does," he assented grimly, adding as a cutting afterthought, "a sophomore, I suppose, would be beneath your notice?" 

She smiled sweetly. "Oh, dear me, no!" she assurred him, "not in the least--it is all the same to me, you see, Mr. Tony!" 

Antony should have realised by this time the folly of any further tilting, but he did not. 

"Your interest naturally turns, then, to men of my uncle's age?" he inquired caustically. 16 

16

She considered this with a pretty seriousness. 

"N-no, hardly that," she said at length. "It is only that I do not-- that I am not--somehow, young men (and such very young men! her eyes added) do not exactly . . ." 

"You need not trouble to explain yourself any further," Antony broke in coldly. "It is somewhat unfortunate," he continued, enunciating carefully, with averted eyes, "that I, of all people, should have been selected for your escort this morning." 

He had never said anything so nearly rude to a woman; but then he had never to his recollection been so thoroughly annoyed by one, since the dimly distant days when a series of deprecating 

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