ard. Now that she
was out in the light of partial day again, in the Children's Room, she
ran across both of them every little while in her errands upstairs; and
once Mrs. De Guenther, gentle, lorgnetted and gray-clad, had been shown
over the Children's Room. The couple lived all alone in a great,
handsome old house that was being crowded now by the business district.
She had always thought that if she were a Theosophist she would try to
plan to have them for an uncle and aunt in her next incarnation. They
suited her exactly for the parts.

But it's a long way down to the basement where city libraries are apt to
keep their children, and the De Guenthers hadn't been down there since
the last time they asked her to dinner. And here, with every sign of
having come to say something _very_ special, stood Mr. De Guenther!
Phyllis' irrepressibly cheerful disposition gave a little jump toward
the light. But she went on with her story--business before pleasure!

However, she did manage to get Robin Hood out of his brook a little more
quickly than she had planned. She scattered her children with a swift
executive whisk, and made so straight for her friend that she deceived
the children into thinking they were going to see him expelled, and they
banked up and watched with anticipatory grins.

"I do hope you want to see me especially!" she said brightly.

The children, disappointed, relaxed their attention.

Mr. De Guenther rose slowly and neatly from his seat beside the rather
bored Isaac Rabinowitz, who dived into his book again with alacrity.

"Good afternoon, Miss Braithwaite," he said in the amiably precise voice
which matched so admirably his beautifully precise movements and his
immaculate gray spats. "Yes. In the language of our young friend here,
'I am the guy.'"

Phyllis giggled before she thought. Some people in the world always make
your spirits go up with a bound, and the De Guenther pair invariably had
that effect on her.

"Oh, Mr. De Guenther!" she said, "I am shocked at you! That's slang!"

"It was more in the nature of a quotation," said he apologetically. "And
how are you this exceedingly unpleasant day, Miss Braithwaite? We have
seen very little of you lately, Mrs. De Guenther and I."

The Liberry Teacher, gracefully respectful in her place, wriggled with
invisible impatience over this carefully polite conversational opening.
He had come down here on purpose to see her--there must be something
going to