ntlemen with budding mustaches and full-blown raiment, were rigidly
inspected and their visits carefully chaperoned: but letters came and
were treasured and the cheerful inanity of their contents imparted, in
strict secrecy, to bosom friends of the recipients.

Mary received no such letters. No cousins or family friends called to
deliver messages to her. No photographs of young fellows in lettered
sweaters were hidden among her belongings. Her friends in the school
thought this state of affairs very odd and they sometimes asked pointed
questions.

Miss Barbara Howe, whose home was in Brookline and whose father was the
senior partner of an old and well-known firm of downtown merchants, was
the leading questioner. She liked Mary and the latter liked her. Barbara
was pretty and full of spirits and, although she was the only child, and
a rather spoiled one, in a wealthy family, there was no snobbishness in
her make-up.

"But I can't see," she declared, "what you have been doing all the time.
Where have you been keeping yourself? Don't you know ANYBODY?"

Mary smiled. "Oh, yes," she replied, "I know a good many people."

"You know what I mean. Don't you know any of the fellows at Harvard, or
Tech, or Yale, or anywhere? I know dozens. And you must know some. You
know Sam Keith; you said you did."

Mary admitted that she knew Sam slightly.

"Isn't he fun! Sam and I are great chums. Doesn't he dance divinely!"

"I don't know. I never saw him dance."

"Then you've missed something. Do you know his friend, the one on the
football team--Crawford Smith, his name is--do you know him?"

Mary nodded. "I--I've met him," she said.

"You HAVE? Don't you think he is perfectly splendid?"

"I don't know. Is he?"

"Of course he is. Haven't you read about him in the papers? He made that
long run for a touchdown in the Yale game. Oh, you should have seen it!
I couldn't speak for two days after that game. He was just as cool and
calm. All the Yale men were trying to get him and he dodged--I never saw
anyone so cool and who kept his head so well."

"I thought the papers spoke most of the way he kept his feet."

"Then you did read about it! Of course you did! I'm just dying to know
him. All the girls are crazy about him. Where did you meet him? Tell
me!"

Mary smiled. On the occasion of her only meeting with Crawford Smith
that young fellow had been anything but cool.

"I met him in my uncle's store at South Harniss," she said