him.

"Miss Havens left her regards for you," she explained. "She went
to-day."

"Oh," said Peter, "wasn't it sudden?"

"Sort of. She'd been considerin' of it for some time, and last night she
made up her mind. But I did think," said Mrs. Blodgett, "that she'd have
said good-bye to _you_." And not eliciting anything by way of a reply,
she added: "Miss Havens is a nice girl. I hate to think of her slavin'
her life out in an office. She'd ought to get married."

"A girl has ever so many more chances in her home town," Peter offered
hopefully.

"Yes, I suppose so." Mrs. Blodgett sighed. "Is there anything I can do
for you, Mr. Weatheral?"

"Nothing, thank you." He was lingering still on the landing on Mrs.
Blodgett's account, but he found his finger slipping between the leaves
of the volume he had brought from the library.

"Ah," she warned him, "readin' is an improvin' occupation, but there's a
book we hadn't any of us ought to miss, and that's the Book of Life, Mr.
Weatheral." And somehow with that ringing in his ears, Peter spent
several minutes walking up and down in his room before he could settle
to his book again.

II

It was a week or ten days after Miss Havens left, before Peter went down
to Bloombury for his midsummer vacation, a week in which he had the
greatest difficulty in getting back to the House of the Shining Walls.
He set out for it almost immediately with a feeling akin to the release
with which one returns to daily habit after the departure of an
unexpected guest. But his thought would no sooner strike into the
accustomed paths than Miss Minnie Havens would meet him there
unaccountably, to begin again those long intimate conversations which
led toward and about the House, but never quite to it. Peter found
himself looking out for those meetings with some notion of dodging them,
and yet once they were fairly off, he owned them a great relief from
Blodgett's. Now that it was withdrawn, he realized in the girl's bright
companionship the effect of the rose-red glow of the shade that Aggie
drew down over the front parlour lamp on the evenings when the
Gentlemen's Outfitter called. It had prevented his seeing until now,
that the chief difference between himself and his fellow boarders, was
that for most of them, this was a place where they had come to stay.
Having let Miss Havens go on alone to the place she was bound for, he
had moments of dreadful sinking, as it occurred to him to wonde