zzled her, he at least never bored her or
anybody else, and for this she praised him in the gates. Her respect
for him deepened when she perceived that he never allowed himself to
be absorbed or monopolized.

The pleasant widow did not take him too seriously. She only asked that
he amuse and interest her. He did both, to a superlative degree. That
is why and how he saw so much of the school-girl cousin whose naivete
made him smile, it was so absurdly sincere.

Mrs. Baker was glad enough to have Howard take her charge off her
hands occasionally. She thought contact with this fine pagan an
excellent thing for the girl who took herself so seriously. She was
really fond of Mary Virginia, but she must have found her hand-grenade
directness a bit disconcerting at times. She wanted the child's visit
to be pleasant, and she considered it very amiable of Howard to help
her make it so. She had no faintest notion of danger--to her Mary
Virginia was nothing but a child, a little girl one indulged with
pickles and pound-cake and the bliss of staying up later than the
usual bedtime. As for Hunter, his was the French attitude toward the
Young Person; she had heard him say he preferred his flowers in full
bloom and his fruit ripe--one then knows what one is getting; one
isn't deceived by canker in the closed bud and worm in the green
fruit. No, Howard wasn't the sort that hankered for verjuice.

None the less, although Mrs. Baker didn't know it, Mary Virginia was
engaged to the godlike Howard when she returned to school. It was to
be a state secret until after she was graduated, and in the meantime
he was to "make himself worthier of her love." She hadn't any notion
he could be improved upon, but it pleased her to hear him say that.
Humility in the superman is the ultimate proof of perfection.

The maid who attended her room at school arranged for the receipt of
his letters and mailed Mary Virginia's. The maid was sentimental, and
delighted to play a part smacking of those dime novels she spoiled her
brains with.

The little schoolgirl who was in love with love, and secretly
betrothed to a man who had stepped alive out of old knightly romance,
walked in the Land of April Rainbows and felt the whole joyous
universe suffused with a delicious and quivering glow of light and
sound and scent. Surcharged with an emotion that she was irresistibly
urged to express, and unable to do so by word of mouth, she was driven
to the necessity of