ouse,--the Mariposa Tennis Club rent it, you remember, for fifty
cents a month,--and Pupkin used to perform perfect prodigies of valour,
leaping in the air to serve with his little body hooked like a letter
S. Sometimes, too, they went out on Lake Wissanotti in the evening in
Pupkin's canoe, with Zena sitting in the bow and Pupkin paddling in the
stern and they went out ever so far and it was after dark and the stars
were shining before they came home. Zena would look at the stars and
say how infinitely far away they seemed, and Pupkin would realize that a
girl with a mind like that couldn't have any use for a fool such as
him. Zena used to ask him to point out the Pleiades and Jupiter and Ursa
minor, and Pupkin showed her exactly where they were. That impressed
them both tremendously, because Pupkin didn't know that Zena remembered
the names out of the astronomy book at her boarding-school, and Zena
didn't know that Pupkin simply took a chance on where the stars were.

And ever so many times they talked so intimately that Pupkin came mighty
near telling her about his home in the Maritime Provinces and about his
father and mother, and then kicked himself that he hadn't the manliness
to speak straight out about it and take the consequences.

Please don't imagine from any of this that the course of Mr. Pupkin's
love ran smooth. On the contrary, Pupkin himself felt that it was
absolutely hopeless from the start.

There were, it might be admitted, certain things that seemed to indicate
progress.

In the course of the months of June and July and August, he had taken
Zena out in his canoe thirty-one times. Allowing an average of two miles
for each evening, Pupkin had paddled Zena sixty-two miles, or more than
a hundred thousand yards. That surely was something.

He had played tennis with her on sixteen afternoons. Three times he had
left his tennis racket up at the judge's house in Zena's charge, and
once he had, with her full consent, left his bicycle there all night.
This must count for something. No girl could trifle with a man to the
extent of having his bicycle leaning against the verandah post all night
and mean nothing by it.

More than that--he had been to tea at the judge's house fourteen times,
and seven times he had been asked by Lilian Drone to the rectory when
Zena was coming, and five times by Nora Gallagher to tea at the doctor's
house because Zena was there.

Altogether he had eaten so many meals where