ithout a conventional kiss. When
he had satisfied her, Lou glanced at the brother and then at Frankie.

"Someone else to be smacked," she said, stopping Frankie's flight by
winding her arms around the twisting waist.

Evan was ready to turn the whole affair into a joke, and shouting "I'm
game," he caught Frankie and pressed his lips to hers.

Again Mrs. Nelson blushed. So did Miss Arling.

"Gee!" cried Lou; "I just thought that's what the bank did for fellows."

Evan was thus acknowledged a regular bankclerk, and the laugh he vented
was well tinctured with exultation.

Then began a series of questions and answers, recitations and
interruptions, commendations and exaggerations. For two hours the
mother, the son and the two wide-eyed girls listened and looked, or
asked and received. The expressions Evan used puzzled them, but he
shook his head deprecatingly when they asked for definitions which he
knew would be unintelligible to them. He had not been talking with
them long before he discovered how to interest them--by saying
mysterious things. From the moment of his discovery he revelled in the
clerical technical phrases that he had picked up at the Mt. Alban
office, and the women justified the assertion of that circus man who
said: "Humanity likes to be humbugged."

Lou, with a new and sudden affection for housework, insisted on getting
the supper. Mrs. Nelson, of course, could not consent to it on this
the night of her banker's return; nobody's hands but her own must lay
the cloth and mix the salad. But Lou was strangely insistent, and the
upshot of the competition was co-operation. Evan was left on the
verandah with Frankie.

No doubt there is a time for everything. That was the time for Evan to
tell how lonesome he had been.... And this is the time to make a brief
sketch of Miss Arling. Her face was sweet, then it was thoughtful; her
eyes were blue-green, bright. She looked not unlike Love's
incarnation. She bore a strong resemblance to a baby. In short, she
was--what her best friends called her--a dear.

"You don't know how I have missed you, Frank," said Evan, and when she
gave him a scrutinizing look, he hurriedly added: "a fellow gets so
lonesome, you know."

"Do you like the bank, Evan?" she asked, fencing.

"You bet. A fellow gets such a good insight into--things."

"You were a dandy at school," she observed seriously.

He eyed her suspiciously. He was no longer a school-boy. He