e
third time. Her passing and repassing before his abstracted and
unseeing vision had become slightly monotonous, and for the first time
he focused his eyes back from their distant view of pulp marshes and
stock certificates and inspected the girl directly. Why, he knew that
girl! It was Miss Hastings.

As if in obedience to his steady gaze she looked across at him and
waved her basket.

"Where are you going?" he asked with the heartiness of enforced
courtesy.

"After ferns," she responded, and laughed.

"By George, that's so!" he said, and ran up the stream to a narrow
place where he made a magnificent jump and only got one shoe wet.

He was profuse, not in his apologies, but in his intention to make them.

"Jinks!" he said. "I'm ashamed to say I forgot all about that. I
found myself suddenly confronted with a business proposition that had
to be worked out, and I thought of nothing else."

"I hope you succeeded," she said pleasantly.

There wasn't a particle of vengefulness about Miss Hastings. She was
not one to hold this against him; he could see that at once! She
understood men. She knew that grave problems frequently confronted
them, and that such minor things as fern gathering expeditions would
necessarily have to step aside and be forgotten. She was one of the
bright, cheerful, always smiling kind; one who would make a sunshiny
helpmate for any man, and never object to anything he did--before
marriage.

All this she conveyed in lively but appealing chatter; all, that is,
except the last part of it, a deduction which Sam supplied for himself.
For the first time in his life he had paused to judge a girl as he
would "size up" a man, and he was a little bit sorry that he had done
so, for while Miss Hastings was very agreeable, there was a certain
acidulous sharpness about her nose and uncompromising thinness about
her lips which no amount of laughing vivacity could quite conceal.

Dutifully, however, he gathered ferns for the rockery of her aunt in
Albany, and Miss Hastings, in return, did her best to amuse and
delight, and delicately to convey the thought of what an agreeable
thing it would be for a man always to have this cheerful companionship.
She even, on the way back, went so far as inadvertently to call him
Sam, and apologized immediately in the most charming confusion.

"Really," she added in explanation, "I have heard Mr. Westlake and the
others call you Sam so often that the name just