"You flatter me! I'm nearly four years older! but I suppose she seems
much more grown-up, and she knows a great many things I don't."

"I dare say she does!" Dan laughed. And with this they turned to other
matters.

Dan sat facing her, hat in hand, and as the train rushed through the
Berkshires Sylvia formed new impressions of him. She saw him now as a
young man of affairs, with errands abroad--this in itself of
significance; and he had to do with politics, a subject that had begun
to interest Sylvia. The cowlick where his hair parted kept a stubborn
wisp of brown hair in rebellion, and it shook amusingly when he spoke
earnestly or laughed. His gray eyes were far apart and his nose was
indubitably a big one. He laughed a good deal, by which token one saw
that his teeth were white and sound. Something of the Southwestern drawl
had survived his years at New Haven, but when he became earnest his eyes
snapped and he spoke with quick, nervous energy, in a deep voice that
was a little harsh. Sylvia had heard a great deal about the brothers and
young men friends of her companions at college and was now more
attentive to the outward form of man than she had thought of being
before.

When they reached Boston, Harwood took Sylvia and her companions to
luncheon at the Touraine and put them on their train for Wellesley. His
thoughtfulness and efficiency could not fail to impress the young women.
He was an admirable cavalier, and Sylvia's companions were delighted
with him. He threatened them with an early visit to college, suggesting
the most daring possibilities as to his appearance. He repeated, at
Sylvia's instigation, the incident of the hearse horses at Poughkeepsie,
with new flourishes, and cheerfully proposed a cousinship to all of
them.

"Or, perhaps," he said, when he had found seats for them and had been
admonished to leave, "perhaps it would be more in keeping with my great
age to become your uncle. Then you would be cousins to each other and we
should all be related."

Speculations as to whether he would ever come kept the young women
laughing as they discussed him. They declared that the meeting on the
train had been by ulterior design and they quite exhausted the fun of it
upon Sylvia, who gained greatly in importance through the encounter with
Harwood. She was not the demure young person they had thought her; it
was not every girl who could produce a personable young man on a railway
journey.

Sylvia wond