he was sure that the only way of keeping
their friendship and their enjoyment keen would lie in avoiding any
surfeit. For herself, she felt no uneasiness. Reed's society, under no
circumstances, could become cloying. But for Reed she did not know. The
idler the hands, the sooner they weary of any toy. And poor Reed's
hands, in all surety, were very, very idle. Moreover, unless she went
out greedily in search of fresh variety, how could she bring it into
his present prison? If she spent too much time with him, inevitably
they would exhaust their fund of gossip. Then they would be driven into
becoming autobiographical, and that would be the finish of their
present friendship. Therefore,--

"Sorry, Reed," she told him; "but there's a tea on at the Prathers'.
Earlier, I'm taking Dolph Dennison canoeing."

"Olive!" Reed's accent was remonstrant. "How can you stand that little
duffer?"

Olive rose to the defence.

"He's not such a duffer. Of course, he's young and callow; but he's
good fun."

"Yes; but an instructor, and only rhetoric, at that." Reed's voice
showed his scorn.

"You're jealous, Reed. You think he will do better metaphors than you;
but you needn't worry. Dolph doesn't talk shop. Besides, he may get to
be a real professor, if he keeps at work; and," Olive's glance, merry
and not uncomfortably pitiful, rested upon the long-limbed figure lying
so flat beside her; "even you must admit it, Reed, that rhetoric is a
much safer means of livelihood than engineering. Good bye, boy, and
keep out of mischief till I get here, next time."

As it chanced, it was that afternoon that Brenton came to see him, for
the first time since Reed's return. Whatever Brenton's thought about
the matter, it must be confessed that Opdyke, albeit healthy-minded and
as philosophical as a surgical case can ever be, had felt a good deal
of dread of their meeting. In the old days, he had been the strong one
and the masterful, Brenton the weak. The present reversal of the
situation went upon his nerves.

He had remembered Brenton clearly, all these intervening years. More
than once, in the intervals of his strenuous life, he had found himself
wondering what the gaunt young countryman had become. In the time of
it, Reed had had no notion how thoroughly he had liked the fellow, how
thoroughly he had believed in his latent possibilities. Looking back
upon them now, judging them by the broader standards of his own wider
knowledge of the thi