"

Catherine Smith, sitting on the top step of the porch of her home, Three
Gables, bent her red-gold head over the pad of paper on her knee and
wrote painfully, her forehead puckered earnestly. She had been a year at
college and was just beginning her summer vacation. All through the busy
year, full of delightful new experiences, she had looked forward to the
leisure of summer, in which she might adequately declare her devotion to
the college which had been her mother's and was now her own. From the
day, the June before, when she had gone there to visit her friend,
Hannah Eldred, she had felt a keen sense of "belonging," especially
pleasant because her frail health had compelled her to lead a somewhat
secluded life at home, and she had not felt really acquainted with the
young people in the little town of Winsted, where she had always lived.

Now all that was changing. At college she had been forced to conquer her
shyness, and, to her delight, she soon found that the boys and girls at
home were more than glad to receive her into their circle upon equal
terms. Her physician parents were everybody's friends, and Catherine,
who adored her father and mother, was eager to show herself worthy to be
their daughter. In order to do so, she reasoned, she must be of real
service to the town and to her college. The only way she had thought of
so far was to write an Alma Mater song, expressive not only of the
rapturous loyalty of undergraduates, but of the graver love of alumnae
like her mother.

"It is very hard," she sighed. "It must be stately and yet not heavy. O
me! And here comes Algernon."

With a resigned air she folded her scribbled papers and thrust her
pencil into the coil of red braids encircling her head. Algernon
Swinburne, ever since his foolish mother had christened him for the
poet, had, by turns, amused and wearied his fellow-citizens. While
Catherine had lived apart, she had been spared his lengthy visits, but
with the pleasures of social life had come its penalties and she was now
on Algernon's list and obliged to spend frequent hours in his really
trying society. He came up the long walk now with a curious springing
gait, and Catherine tried to summon a hospitable smile to her lips.

Algernon refused a chair. He always appeared to be just going, "and
yet," as Polly Osgood said with a groan, "he almost never goes!" He
perched uncomfortably upon the railing and opened fire at once.

"Have you seen the last