and love stories all of us girls like to crowd around together
at lunch hour and read in the Fireside Companion, when we pick up the
special copies they throw around; only this is in real life, you know."

"I promise," returned Jessie Staples, gravely; "only I hope this isn't a
ruse to turn off the question about the young car conductor whom I saw
you with."

"Oh, no! the secret is about him," laughed Dorothy, gleefully, "and it
will make you open your eyes wider than they are now when you hear it;
and it's so dreadfully romantic, too. You know how Nadine Holt has been
boasting of late about the handsome new conductor on the Broadway car,
on whom she has 'made a mash,' as she phrases it. Well, the young man
you saw me talking to--is he."

"What?" gasped Jessie. "Do you mean it was Nadine's beau to whom you
were talking?"

"He's _not_ her beau!" declared Dorothy, flushing up redly and angrily.
"He doesn't care a snap of his finger for Nadine. He told me so."

"He--told--you--so?" repeated Jessie Staples, too amazed at the instant
to frame any other remark, while the thought flashed through her brain
how deeply Nadine Holt loved this handsome young man, and that she was
confident of a proposal of marriage from him sooner or later. She had
often told Jessie as much as that of late.

"It was only last week that I first met him," Dorothy went on, "and it
happened in this way: I came down, just by chance, on his car, and--and
I noticed that he looked at me rather admiringly, as he changed my
fifty-cent piece, while standing beside me; and--and I noticed, too,
that he leaned against me a little more than the occasion demanded, or
at least I fancied so; but perhaps it was the jolting of the car. I took
little shy peeps at him. I wanted to see what he looked like, Nadine had
been sounding his praises so. I found he was dreadfully nice, quite the
handsomest young fellow I had ever seen--elegantly formed, straight as
an arrow, with such a beautiful dark mustache, dark hair, and laughing
black eyes, and the whitest of white hands. When he helped me off the
car he held my hand so tightly and so long that I felt terribly
embarrassed and did not know what to do or say. But, oh! he was _so_
polite! I dropped my eyes and never looked at him as I stepped off. How
I ever got into the other car I never knew. A moment later the other
conductor came around for my fare, and then--oh, horrors! I could not
find my pocket-book. I searched