Mr. Minorkey wanted to inspect an eighty across the slough, on which
he had been asked to lend four hundred dollars at three per cent a month,
and five after maturity, with a waiver in the mortgage, he suggested that
Helen should walk back, leaving him to go on slowly, as the rheumatism in
his left knee would permit. It was quite necessary that Miss Minorkey
should go back; her boots were not thick enough for the passage of the
slough. Mr. Charlton kindly offered to accompany her.

Albert Charlton thought that Helen Minorkey looked finer than ever, for
sun and wind had put more color into her cheeks, and he, warm with
running, pushed back his long light hair, and looked side-wise at the
white forehead and the delicate but fresh cheeks below.

"So you like Cecropias and bright-green beetles, do you?" he said, and he
gallantly unpinned the wide-winged moth from his hat-crown and stuck it
on the cover of Miss Minorkey's portfolio, and then added the green
beetle. Helen thanked him in her quiet way, but with pleased eyes.

"Excuse me, Miss Minorkey," said Albert, blushing, as they approached the
hotel, "I should like very much to accompany you to the parlor of the
hotel, but people generally see nothing but the ludicrous side of
scientific pursuits, and I should only make you ridiculous."

"I should be very glad to have you come," said Helen. "I don't mind being
laughed at in good company, and it is such a relief to meet a gentleman
who can talk about something besides corner lots and five per cent a
month, and," with a wicked look at the figure of her father in the
distance, "and mortgages with waivers in them!"

Our cynic philosopher found his cynicism melting away like an iceberg in
the Gulf-stream. An hour before he would have told you that a woman's
flattery could have no effect on an intellectual man; now he felt a
tremor of pleasure, an indescribable something, as he shortened his steps
to keep time with the little boots with which Miss Minorkey trod down the
prairie grass, and he who had laughed at awkward boys for seeking the aid
of dancing-masters to improve their gait, wished himself less awkward,
and actually blushed with pleasure when this self-possessed young lady
praised his conversation. He walked with her to the hotel, though he took
the precaution to take his hat off his head and hang it on his finger,
and twirl it round, as if laughing at it himself--back-firing against the
ridicule of others. He who t