unmanageable.

"I'm sorry to desert you here, so ungallantly," Burns declared, bringing
the car to a standstill at a cross-road. "If my friend here were quite
fit I'd put him down, too, and give him the pleasure of walking in with
you. In a week or two more I'll turn him loose. Looks pretty healthy,
doesn't he?"

"I'm entirely able to walk in with Miss Ruston now," said Leaver,
standing, hat in hand, in the road, as Charlotte adjusted her belongings
and prepared to walk rapidly away.

"That's my affair, for a bit longer," and Burns put out a peremptory
hand. "Be good and jump in. The lady will excuse you, and I won't, so
there you are. Forgive me, Miss Ruston, and don't bring on heart failure
by walking too fast in this August sun."

"I won't. Good-bye, and thank you both," and Charlotte set briskly off
toward home, while the car swept round the turn and disappeared into
a hollow of the road.

"That's what I call a particularly worth-while girl," commented Burns, as
the Imp carried them away. "Beauty, and sense, and spirit, not to mention
originality and a few other attributes. You don't often get them all
combined. Good old family, according to my wife, but all gone now, and
this girl left to make her way on her own resources. But perhaps you know
all this already, since you've met her before?"

"I know the main facts?--yes," Leaver responded. His lips had taken on a
curiously tight set, since the car had left the corner. His eyes, under
their strongly marked brows, narrowed a little, as he looked out across a
field of corn yellowing in the sunlight. "She has visited more or less in
Baltimore, where she has been very much admired."

"Why 'has been'?" queried Burns. "She doesn't look like a 'has-been' to
me. More like very much of a 'now-and-here'--eh?"

"I mean only that since she has been thrown upon her own resources she
has applied herself closely to the study of photography, and has been
little seen in society."

"I imagine when she was seen she kept a few fellows guessing. She looks
to me as if she might have refused her full share of men."

"I have no doubt of it."

That which Burns would have enjoyed saying next he refrained from. But to
himself he made the observation: "By the signs I haven't much doubt you
were one of them, old man." Aloud he questioned innocently:

"You know her rather well?"

"Quite well."

"Your manner says 'Drop it,'" observed Burns, with a keen glance at a
side-face cle