hair by
the table there was silence. Now that Dick Brown's bodily wants were
cared for, Hertha began to question herself how he had ever gotten
there, and to wonder whether she should not be angry with him for
following her uninvited to her home. But she was too homesick, too much
in need of companionship, not to feel a little pleasure in seeing him,
his long legs tucked under his straight chair, his thin face making a
grotesque silhouette against the window shade. He was certainly homely
and a pusher, just an ordinary "hill billy," as he had described
himself. She decided that since he had come uninvited he must begin the
conversation.

Dick Brown, as though appreciating his position, opened his mouth to
speak and then sneezed--not once, but a number of times.

"You've taken a cold already," Hertha said sympathetically. "You
shouldn't have come out to-night."

"No, I haven't, indeed I haven't. I'm just getting over one."

"How long have you had it?"

"About a month."

"I believe you got it that morning in the park. You shouldn't have given
me your overcoat."

"That had nothing to do with it!" Brown spoke with a kindly bluster.
"Nothing to do with it. Don't you think that for a minute. You see,
after you left, I got playing with the kids and they squeezed snow down
my neck and I lambasted them and we had a grand lark. It was mighty
fine, but I learned that snow melts and then----"

He sneezed again.

"It was too bad," Hertha exclaimed. "It's so hard to be ill away from
home."

"I reckon it is! Your meals set down by the side of your bed, the gruel
cold and full of lumps, no one to growl at when your head aches and you
can't go to sleep! It's a mighty poor state of things."

"I'm afraid you were pretty sick."

"Just missed pneumonia."

"You ought not to have come out to-night." Hertha spoke with emphasis.

"Oh, I'm all hunky now. I've sat in the library most every night since
they let me out. Wouldn't they grin at home if they saw me fooling this
way with books! Why, I know more news out of the magazines this month
than all of Casper County ever knew since the first moonshiner set up
his still! I'm reeking with information. But I bet you're reading one of
those three-volume novels they tell about that last a year. I couldn't
wait any longer, so I came to headquarters."

"How did you get my address?" Hertha had not meant to ask the question,
but it slipped out unawares.

"Don't make me explain, pleas