l into
impromptu waltzes and two-steps on the porch, he joined them and danced
religiously with whomsoever he found to hand; usually Miss Hastings or
Miss Westlake.

The latter ingenious young lady, during this while, continued to adore
business, and with increasing fervor every day, and regretted, quite
aloud, that she had never paid sufficient attention to this absorbing
amusement, out of which all the men, that is, those who were really
strong and purposeful, seem to derive so much satisfaction! On the
following Monday at Bald Hill, when Hollis Creek and Meadow Brook
fraternized together, in the annual union picnic, she found occasion
for the most direct tete-a-tete of all anent commercial matters.

Under Bald Hill were any number of charming natural retreats, jumbles
of Titanically toy-strewn, clean, bare rocks, screened here and there
by tangles of young scrub oak and pine which grew apparently on bare
stone surfaces and out of infinitesimal chinks and crannies, in utter
defiance of all natural law. Go where you would on that day, there
were couples in each of the rock shelters; young couples, engaged in
that fascinating pastime of finding out all they could about each
other, and wondering about each other, and revealing themselves to each
other as much as they cared to do, and flirting; oh, in a perfectly
respectable sort of a way, you know; legitimate and commendable
flirting; the sort of flirting which is only experimental and
necessary, and which may cease at any moment to become mere airy
trifling, and turn into something intensely and desperately serious,
having a vital bearing upon the entire future lives of people; and
there were deeply solemn moments, in spite of all the surface hilarity
and gaiety, in many of these little out of way nooks kindly provided by
beneficent nature for this identical purpose.

In one of these nooks, a curious sort of doll's amphitheatre, partly
screened by dwarf cedars, were Miss Westlake and Mr. Turner, and Sam
could not tell you to this day how she had roped him out of the herd,
and isolated him, and brought him there.

"Business is just perfectly fascinating," she was saying. "I've been
talking a lot to papa about it here lately. He thinks a great deal of
you, by the way."

"He does," Sam grunted in non-committal acknowledgment, with the sharp
reflection that he had better look out for himself if that were the
case, since the most of Westlake's old friends were bank