seems to slip out."

"That's right," he said cordially. "Sam's my name. When people call
me Mr. Turner I know they are strangers."

"Then I think I shall call you Sam," she said, laughing most
engagingly. "It's so much easier," and sure enough she did as soon as
they were well within the hearing of Miss Westlake, at the hotel.

"Oh, Sam," she called, turning in the doorway, "you have my gloves in
your pocket."

Miss Westlake stiffened like an icicle, and a stern resolve came upon
her. Whatever happened, she saw her duty plainly before her. She had
introduced Mr. Turner to Miss Hastings, and she was responsible. It
was her moral obligation to rescue him from the clutches of that
designing young person, and she immediately reminded him that she had
an engagement to give him a tennis lesson every day. There was still
time for a set before dinner. Also, far be it from her to be so
forward as to call him Sam, or to annoy him with silly chattering. She
was serious-minded, was Miss Westlake, and sweet and helpful; any man
could see that; and she fairly adored business. It was so interesting.

When they came back from their tennis game, hurrying because it was
high time to dress for dinner and the dance, she met Miss Hastings in
the hall, but the two bosom friends barely nodded. There had sprung up
an unaccountable coolness between them, a coolness which Sam by no
means noticed, however, for at the far end of the porch sat Princeman,
already back from Hollis Creek to dress, and with him were Westlake and
McComas and Blackrock and Cuthbert, and they were in very close
conference. When Sam approached them they stopped talking abruptly for
just one little moment, then resumed the conversation quite naturally,
even more than quite naturally in fact, and the experienced Sam smiled
grimly as he excused himself to dress.

Billy Westlake met him as he was going up-stairs. To Billy had been
entrusted the office of rounding up all the young people who were going
over to Hollis Creek, and by previous instruction, though wondering at
his sister's choice, he assigned Sam to that young lady, a fate which
Sam accepted with becoming gratitude.

He had plenty of food for thought as he donned his costume of dead
black and staring white, and somehow or other he was distrait that
evening all the way over to Hollis Creek. Only when he met Miss
Stevens did he brighten, as he might well do, for Miss Stevens,
charming in every g