"You a friend of Dr. Underwood's?"

"Miss Underwood belongs to the doctor's family then, does she?"

"Sure. You coming to visit, or are you going to write him up?"

"I didn't know this was a bureau to extract information," Burton remarked, as he made a note of the doctor's home address from the directory. "What is there to write up about Dr. Underwood?"

"Aw, you think I'm green."

"No, merely ill-mannered," said Burton politely, as he turned away.

Outside, a row of cabmen, toeing an imaginary line, waved their whips frantically over it to attract his attention. He selected the nearest.

"Do you know where Dr. Underwood lives?"

The man held Burton's suitcase suspended in mid-air while he honored its owner with the same look of amused curiosity.

"Sure! The Red House, they call it, on Rowan street. Take you there?"

"No. Take me to the best hotel in town," Burton said coolly, stepping into the cab.

Why the mischief did everybody grin at the mention of Dr. Underwood's name? Burton was conscious of being in an irritable state of mind, but still it could not be altogether his sensitiveness that made him hear innuendoes everywhere. What sort of people were the Underwoods, anyhow? Philip had met Miss Underwood in Washington and fallen crazily in love,--after a fashion he had. (Hadn't he been crazy about Ellice Avery a year before?) But this time he had emphasized the depths of his despair by falling ill of a low fever when his suit failed to prosper. Beyond the fact that the girl was "an angel," "a dream," and other things of the same insubstantial order, Burton had little knowledge to go upon. The family might be the laughing stock of High Ridge, for all he knew. When a boy of twenty-two fell crazily in love, he didn't think about such matters; but Rachel, who, in a panic over her boy, had hurried him off to intercede with the cold-hearted damsel, would, as he well knew, hold him personally responsible for the consequences of his unwelcome mission, if they should prove to be unpleasant. Well, he would have to put in his time thinking up something to demand of Rachel that would be hard enough to even up scores a little.

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