ould like awfully to take you."

Thinking the matter over afterward, Helen was at a loss to discover why
she had so readily accepted this somewhat unusual invitation. To see
this young man at an office on a matter of business was all very well;
it was one thing to meet him casually on the street and walk with him a
few blocks up the Avenue--but it was decidedly another to promise she
would accompany him to a professional baseball game. Baseball, of all
things! Yet she had accepted, and on the whole she could not seem to
be quite sorry that she had. But it would never do to tell Aunt Mary.
Yet Miss Wardrop must of course be told. Helen was twenty-five years
of age and her own mistress, but Boston in the blood dies hard.

It was moribund, however, on the afternoon that Smith called to escort
her northward to the field where those idols of Gotham, the Giants,
were indulging in a death grapple with their rivals from Chicago in the
closing series of the year, with the National League pennant hanging on
its result. Her companion had, to be sure, called formally and in due
order upon Miss Wardrop and her niece on an evening of the intervening
period, so that Helen felt her sharp New England sense of the
proprieties lulled to a state of pleasing and comfortable coma.

The elevated train which took them to the grounds was jammed to the
very doors with cheerfully suffering humanity, and Miss Maitland, most
of whose previous experience with crowds had been with those decorous
gatherings in the subway beneath the Common, regarded the struggling
multitude with covert dismay.

"If you should find the elbows of the populace unduly insinuated into
you, don't worry," her companion advised. "It will merely be part of
your general education. Getting back to the soil is nowhere beside the
democratic experience you are about to enjoy," he added.

"I--I didn't expect to be quite as democratic as that," the girl said.

"Well, I'll try to see that the more intimate personal demonstrations
are spared you," her escort reassured her.

Presently they left the train, and passing down the platform they
joined the crowd that was now forcing its slow course along the
inclosed runway which led to the Polo Grounds. There was considerable
jostling, much talking and laughter, deep trampling and shuffling of
many feet. At last Smith reached the window before which for some five
minutes he stood in line.

"Of course I could have gotten box