silent and serious, the while the shuttles of her reason flew like
lightning, weaving the picture of him she had conceived--a gentleman, a
man of her own sort, rather splendid and wise and bewildering. The
portrait completed, there was no room for the hint of presumption she had
half sensed in the brown eyes' glance that had set her alert; and she
looked up at him again, frankly, a trifle curiously.

"I am going to thank you once more," she said, "and ask you to put me up.
There is not a flutter of fear in my pulse now."

"Are you quite sure?"

"Perfectly."

They arose; he untied the horse and beckoned it to the walk's edge.

"I forgot," she said, laughing, "that I am riding cross saddle. I can
mount without troubling you--" She set her toe to the stirrup which he
held, and swung herself up into the saddle with a breezy "Thanks,
awfully," and sat there gathering her bridle.

Had she said enough? How coldly her own thanks rang in her ears--for
perhaps he had saved her neck--and perhaps not. Busy with curb and
snaffle reins, head bent, into her oval face a tint of color crept. Did
he think she treated lightly, flippantly, the courage which became him
so? Or was he already bored by her acknowledgment of it? Sensitive,
dreading to expose youth and inexperience to the amused smile of this
attractive young man of the world, she sat fumbling with her bridle,
conscious that he stood beside her, hat in hand, looking up at her. She
could delay no longer; the bridle had been shifted and reshifted to the
last second of procrastination. She must say something or go.

Meeting his eyes, she smiled and leaned a little forward in her saddle as
though to speak, but his brown eyes troubled her, and all she could say
was "Thank you--good-by," and galloped off down the vista through dim,
leafy depths heavy with the incense of lilac and syringa.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

II

THE IDLER

_Concerning the Young Man in the Ditch and His Attempts to Get Out of It_

Although he was not vindictive, he did not care to owe anything to
anybody who might be inclined to give him a hearing on account of former
obligations or his social position. Everybody knew he had gone to smash;
everybody, he very soon discovered, was naturally afraid of being
bothered by him. The dread of the overfed that an underfed member of the
community may request a seat at the table he now understood perfectly. He
was learning.

So he solicited