.

Yet Harriet hesitated, and the laughter died away on her lips. She knew
she was doing a very wrong thing in asking this young man to lend her
money. But Harriet had been spoiled by too much admiration and she had
had no mother's influence in the four years of her life when she most
needed it. She was determined not to ask her father's help, and she knew
of no one else to whom she could appeal.

"I am not feeling very well, Charlie," Harriet answered queerly, turning
a little pale and trying to summon her courage.

"You've been entertaining too much company!" Charlie Meyers exclaimed. "I
don't think much of that set of 'Automobile Girls' you have staying with
you. They are good-looking enough, but they are kind of standoffish and
superior."

"No, indeed; I am not having too much company," Harriet returned
indignantly, forgetting she must not let herself grow angry with her
ill-bred friend. "I am perfectly devoted to every one of the 'Automobile
Girls,' and Ruth Stuart is my first cousin."

Harriet and Charlie were both silent for a little while after this
unfortunate beginning to their conversation, for Harriet did not know
exactly how to go on.

"I am worried," she began again, after a slight pause in which she
counted the trees along the road to see how fast their car was running.
"I am worried because I am in a great deal of trouble."

"You haven't been getting engaged, have you, Harriet?" asked the young
man anxiously. "If you want to break it off, just leave matters to me."

Harriet laughed in spite of herself. It seemed so perfectly absurd to
her to be expected to leave a matter as important to her happiness as her
engagement to a person like Charlie Meyers to settle.

Charlie Meyers was twenty-two years of age. He had refused to go to
college and had never even finished high school. His father had died when
he was a child, leaving him to the care of a stepmother who had little
affection for him. At the age of twenty-one the boy came into control of
his immense fortune. So it was not remarkable that Charlie Meyers, who
had almost no education, no home influence and a vast sum of money at his
disposal, thought himself of tremendous importance without making any
effort to prove himself so.

"No, I am not engaged, Charlie," Harriet answered frankly. "But I do want
you to do me a favor, and I wonder if you will do it?"

The young man flushed. His red face grew redder still. What was Harriet
going to ask