suitable pause. "I am going to the Squirrel Inn, and I am bound to stay
there. There must be some road not through Germantown by which a fellow
can get into the favor of Mr. Petter. Perhaps you will say a good word
for me, madam?"

"I don't know any good word to say," she answered, "except that you take
excellent care of babies, and I am not at all sure that that would have
any weight with Stephen Petter. Since you are going to the inn, and
since we have already talked together so much, I wish I did properly
know you. Did you ever have a sister at Vassar?"

"I am sorry to say," said Lodloe, "that I never had a sister at that
college, though I have one who wanted very much to go there; but instead
of that she went with an aunt to Europe, where she married."

"An American?" asked Mrs. Cristie.

"Yes," said Lodloe.

"What was his name?"

"Tredwell."

"I never heard of him," said the lady. "There don't seem to be any
threads to take hold of."

"Perhaps you had a brother at Princeton," remarked Lodloe.

"I have no brother," said she.

There was now a pause in the dialogue. The young man was well pleased
that this very interesting young woman wished to know him properly, as
she put it, and if there could be found the least bit of foundation on
which might be built a conventional acquaintance he was determined to
find it.

"Were you a Vassar girl?" he asked.

"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Cristie; "I was there four years."

"Perhaps you know something of old Matthew Vassar, the founder?"

Mrs. Cristie laughed. "I've heard enough about him, you may be sure; but
what has he to do with anything?"

"I once slept in his room," said Lodloe; "in the Founder's Room, with
all his stiff old furniture, and his books, and his portrait."

"You!" cried Mrs. Cristie. "When did you do that?"

"It was two years ago this spring," said Lodloe. "I was up there getting
material for an article on the college which I wrote for the 'Bayside
Magazine.'"

"Did you write that?" said Mrs. Cristie. "I read it, and it was just as
full of mistakes as it could be."

"That may be, and I don't wonder at it," said the young man. "I kept on
taking in material until I had a good deal more than I could properly
stow away in my mind, and it got to be too late for me to go back to the
town, and they had to put me into the Founder's Room, because the house
was a good deal crowded. Before I went to bed I examined all the things
in the room. I didn't s