Archie Jones took her home herself in his car,
but I took her slippers. She'd forgotten them. I thought that a pretty
good sign, wasn't it? You wouldn't let a chap carry round your slippers
unless you knew him pretty well, would you, Miss Philippa?"

"Oh no, nobody would," said Philippa. This of course, was a standing
principle of the Anglican Church.

"And a little after that Dulphemia and Charlie Mostyn and I were
walking to Mrs. Buncomhearst's musical, and we'd only just started
along the street, when she stopped and sent me back for her music--me,
mind you, not Charlie. That seems to me awfully significant."

"It seems to speak volumes," said Philippa.

"Doesn't it?" said Mr. Spillikins. "You don't mind my telling you all
about this Miss Philippa?" he added.

Incidentally Mr. Spillikins felt that it was all right to call her Miss
Philippa, because she had a sister who was really Miss Furlong, so it
would have been quite wrong, as Mr. Spillikins realized, to have called
Miss Philippa by her surname. In any case, the beauty of the morning
was against it.

"I don't mind a bit," said Philippa. "I think it's awfully nice of you
to tell me about it."

She didn't add that she knew all about it already.

"You see," said Mr. Spillikins, "you're so awfully sympathetic. It
makes it so easy to talk to you. With other girls, especially with
clever ones, even with Dulphemia. I often feel a perfect jackass beside
them. But I don t feel that way with you at all."

"Don't you really?" said Philippa, but the honest admiration in Mr.
Spillikin's protruding blue eyes forbade a sarcastic answer.

"By Jove!" said Mr. Spillikins presently, with complete irrelevance, "I
hope you don't mind my saying it, but you look awfully well in
white--stunning." He felt that a man who was affianced, or practically
so, was allowed the smaller liberty of paying honest compliments.

"Oh, this old thing," laughed Philippa, with a contemptuous shake of
her dress. "But up here, you know, we just wear anything." She didn't
say that this old thing was only two weeks old and had cost eighty
dollars, or the equivalent of one person's pew rent at St. Asaph's for
six months.

And after that they had only time, so it seemed to Mr. Spillikins, for
two or three remarks, and he had scarcely had leisure to reflect what a
charming girl Philippa had grown to be since she went to Bermuda--the
effect, no doubt, of the climate of those fortunate islands--when