"Then, as we say in literary circles, you're up against it. No wonder you're beginning to take notice of the frolicsome boarding-school girl who winks at the world. I believe I'd rather take chances myself with that amiable sort than marry into your Newport transatlantic set."

"Well, one thing's certain, Grissy. You've got to[Pg 12] come to Ardsley and help me out while those people are there. Nellie likes you; she thinks you're terribly intellectual and all that, and if you'll throw in a word now and then, why—"

[Pg 12]

"Why, I may be able to protect you from the crafts and assaults of your sister. You seem to forget, Ardy, that I'm not one of your American leisure class. I'm always delighted to meet Mrs. Atchison, but I'm a person of occupations. I have a consultation in Richmond to-morrow, then me for Charlottesville. We have examinations coming on, and, while I like to play with you, I've positively got to work."

"Not if I endow all the chairs in the university! You've not only got to come, but you're going to be there the day they arrive."

Thomas Ardmore, of New York and Ardsley, struck his heavy stick—he always carried a heavy stick—smartly on the cement platform in the stress of his feeling. He was much shorter than Griswold, to whom he was deeply attached—for whom he had, indeed, the frank admiration of a small boy for a big brother. He sometimes wondered how fully Griswold entered into the projects of adventure which he, in his supreme idleness, planned and proposed; but he himself had never[Pg 13] been quite ready to mount horse or shake out sail, and what Griswold had said about indecision rankled in his heart. He was sorry now that he had told of this new enterprise to which he had pledged himself, but he grew lenient toward Griswold's lack of sympathy as he reflected that the quest of a winking girl was rather beneath the dignity of a gentleman wedded not merely to the law, but to the austere teaching profession as well. In his heart he forgave Griswold, but he was all the more resolved to address himself stubbornly to his pursuit of the deity of the car Alexandra, for only by finding her could he establish himself in Griswold's eyes as a man of action, capable of carrying through a scheme requiring cleverness and tact.

[Pg 13]

Ardmore was almost painfully rich, but the usual diversions of the wealthy did not appeal to him, and, having exhausted foreign travel, he spent much time on his estate in 

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