line of his vision, his quick eye caught a tiny moving shadow, lost it, found it again.     

       “Great Scott! There goes Reginald!” he cried, and ran after the shadow.       “Watch for the McKees' cat!”      

       Sidney was running by that time; they were gaining. Their quarry, a four-inch chipmunk, hesitated, gave a protesting squeak, and was caught in Sidney's hand.     

       “You wretch!” she cried. “You miserable little beast—with cats everywhere, and not a nut for miles!”      

       “That reminds me,”—Joe put a hand into his pocket,—“I brought some chestnuts for him, and forgot them. Here.”      

       Reginald's escape had rather knocked the tragedy out of the evening. True, Sidney would not marry him for years, but she had practically promised to sometime. And when one is twenty-one, and it is a summer night, and life stretches eternities ahead, what are a few years more or less?     

       Sidney was holding the tiny squirrel in warm, protecting hands. She smiled up at the boy.     

       “Good-night, Joe.”      

       “Good-night. I say, Sidney, it's more than half an engagement. Won't you kiss me good-night?”      

       She hesitated, flushed and palpitating. Kisses were rare in the staid little household to which she belonged.     

       “I—I think not.”      

       “Please! I'm not very happy, and it will be something to remember.”      

       Perhaps, after all, Sidney's first kiss would have gone without her heart,—which was a thing she had determined would never happen,—gone out of sheer pity. But a tall figure loomed out of the shadows and approached with quick strides.     

       “The roomer!” cried Sidney, and backed away.     

       “Damn the roomer!”      

       Poor Joe, with the summer evening quite spoiled, with no caress to remember, and with a potential rival who possessed both the years and the inches he lacked, coming up the Street!    

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