!" exclaimed Mrs. Goddard.

"Do you think so? I do not know. Now, for instance, I have written a
great many Greek odes to you--"

"To me?" interrupted his companion in surprise.

"Do you think it is so very extraordinary?"

"Very."

"Well--you see--I only saw you once--you won't laugh?"

"No," said Mrs. Goddard, who was very much amused, and was beginning to
think that John Short was the most original young man she had ever met.

"I only saw you once, when you came to the vicarage, and I had not the
least idea what your name was. But I--I hoped you would come back; and so
I used to write poems to you. They were very good, too," added John in a
meditative tone, "I have never written any nearly so good as they were."

"Really?" Mrs. Goddard looked at him rather incredulously and then
laughed.

"You said you would not laugh," objected John.

"I cannot help it in the least," said she. "It seems so funny."

"It did not seem funny to me, I can assure you," replied John rather
warmly. "I thought it very serious."

"You don't do it now, do you?" asked Mrs. Goddard, looking up at him
quietly.

"Oh no--a man's ideals change so much, you know," answered John, who felt
he had been foolishly betrayed into telling his story, and hated to be
laughed at.

"I am very glad of that. How long are you going to stay here, Mr. Short?"

"Until New Year's Day, I think," he answered. "Perhaps you will have time
to forget about the poetry before I go."

"I don't know why," said Mrs. Goddard, noticing his hurt tone. "I
think it was very pretty--I mean the way you did it. You must be a born
poet--to write verses to a person you did not know and had only seen
once!"

"It is much easier than writing verses to moral abstractions one has
never seen at all," explained John, who was easily pacified. "When a man
writes a great deal he feels the necessity of attaching all those
beautiful moral qualities to some real, living person whom he can see--"

"Even if he only sees her once," remarked Mrs. Goddard demurely.

"Yes, even if he only sees her once. You have no idea how hard it is to
concentrate one's faculties upon a mere idea; but the moment a man sees a
woman whom he can endow with all sorts of beautiful qualities--why it's
just as easy as hunting."

"I am glad to have been of so much service to you, even
unconsciously--but, don't you think perhaps Mrs. Ambrose would have done
as well?"

"Mrs. Ambrose?" repeated John. Then h