day Peter had to translate those despatches all by himself!
When he had a cup of tea now, even with three or four men about, he
considered himself lucky. He understood at last what Miss De Voe had
meant when she had spoken of the difficulty of seeing enough of a
popular girl either to love her or to tell her of it. They prayed for
rain in church on Sunday, on account of the drought, and Peter said
"Amen" with fervor. Anything to end such fluttering.

At the end of two weeks, Peter said sadly that he must be going.

"Rubbish," said Watts. "You are to stay for a month."

"I hope you'll stay," said Mrs. D'Alloi.

Peter waited a moment for some one else to speak. Some one else didn't.

"I think I must," he said. "It isn't a matter of my own wishes, but I'm
needed in Syracuse." Peter spoke as if Syracuse was the ultimate of
human misery.

"Is it necessary for you to be there?" asked Leonore.

"Not absolutely, but I had better go."

Later in the day Leonore said, "I've decided you are not to go to
Syracuse. I shall want you here to explain what they do to me."

And that cool, insulting speech filled Peter with happiness.

"I've decided to stay another week," he told Mrs. D'Alloi.

Nor could all the appeals over the telegraph move him, though that day
and the next the wires to Newport from New York and Syracuse were kept
hot, the despatches came so continuously.

Two days after this decision, Peter and Leonore went to a cotillion.
Leonore informed him that: "Mamma makes me leave after supper, because
she doesn't like me to stay late, so I miss the nice part."

"How many waltzes are you going to give me?" asked Peter, with an eye to
his one ball-room accomplishment.

"I'll give you the first," said Leonore, "and then if you'll sit near
me, I'll give you a look every time I see a man coming whom I don't
like, and if you are quick and ask me first, I'll give it to you."

Peter became absolutely happy. "How glad I am," he thought, "that I
didn't go to Syracuse! What a shame it is there are other dances than
waltzes."

But after Peter had had two waltzes, he overheard his aged friend of
fifteen years say something to a girl that raised him many degrees in
his mind. "That's a very brainy fellow," said Peter admiringly. "That
never occurred to me!"

So he waited till he saw Leonore seated, and then joined her. "Won't
you sit out this dance with me?" he asked.

Leonore looked surprised. "He's getting very clever,