twentieth-century bow; and smiled.
Claire stepped quickly out on the veranda.

"Oh, Mr. Smythe!" she cried gaily. "I'm so glad to see you. Come in!"

He was an undersized young man, immaculately dressed in brown tweeds
and shining boots, a very high white collar and a sky-blue tie. The
sombrero swinging in his hand was quite new, ornamented with a broad
band of stamped leather, and it had the widest brim obtainable at the
shop in Denver where a specialty is made of equipping the tenderfoot
for life in the cattle country.

Smythe took Claire's proffered hand, and bent over it as if he had
thought of kissing it, but lacked the courage of his gallantry. Claire
introduced him to Marion, answered his questions about Seth, and then
fluttered away to the kitchen, where she had an angel cake in the oven
not to be entrusted to the cook.

"I arrived only yesterday, Miss Gaylord," Smythe chirped. "But I've
heard of you already."

"I don't know whether to thank you or not," answered Marion.

"Oh, if you please! What I heard made me very solicitous about
Huntington's health."

He smiled knowingly at her, and Marion loosed some of her pent-up
laughter. Truly, Smythe was going to be a treat! She studied him
stealthily while he chattered on. He wore a pointed beard of reddish
hue; his head was quite bald on top, and bulging at the brow; and the
contour of that head, with its polished dome, and the narrow face
tapering down to the pointed beard, was comically suggestive of a
carrot. But it was an intelligent, even intellectual countenance, and
his blue eyes were honest and bright. He might be laughed at, but he
could not be flouted, she thought.

"Then you've been here before, Mr. ----" she began, and hesitated.

"Smythe," he prompted her generously. "J. Hamerton Smythe. S-m-y-t-h-e.
I didn't change it from Smith, and I don't know what one of my
esteemed ancestors did. But I'm glad he did. It gives me a touch of
artificiality, don't you think? I fear being too natural."

Marion laughed, and that pleased him. She led the way to chairs near
an open window where a black and yellow butterfly hovered over a
honeysuckle blossom that had nodded its friendly way into the room.

"I'm from New York too," Smythe rattled on. "Columbia. Doing a little
tutoring and a little postgraduate work. This is my third summer in
the Park. Found it by chance. Wanted to go somewhere, and was tired of
the old places--Maine and Adirondacks and the re