un in teasing when her
arrows made no impression.

Usually A.O. enjoyed it, but she had tangled herself in a web of her own
weaving lately, and for the last few days had been in terror lest Elise
should find her out. Inspired by the picture of the handsome young
lieutenant on Elise's desk, and not wanting to seem behind her room-mate
in romantic experiences, silly little A.O. had drawn on her imagination
for most of the confidences she gave in exchange. When Elise talked of
the lieutenant, A.O. talked of "Jimmy," adding this trait and that grace
until she had built up a beautiful ideal, but a being so different from
the original on which she based her tales, that Jimmy himself would
never have recognized her dashing hero as the bashful fellow he was
accustomed to confront in his mirror.

He had carried her lunch basket when they went to school together, he
had patiently worked the sums on her slate with his big clumsy fingers
when she cried over the mysteries of subtraction. Later, when shy and
overgrown, and too bashful to speak his admiration, he had followed her
around at picnics and parties with a dog-like devotion that touched her.
He had sent her valentines and Christmas cards, and at the last High
School commencement when the graduating exercises marked the parting of
their ways, he had presented her with a photograph album bound in
celluloid, with a bunch of atrociously gaudy pansies and forget-me-nots
painted thereon.

In matching stories with Elise, the album and his awkwardness and his
plodding embarrassed speech somehow slipped into the background, and it
was his devotion and his chivalry she enlarged upon. Elise, impressed by
her hints and allusions, believed in the idealized Jimmy as thoroughly
as A.O. intended she should.

For several days A.O. had been in a quandary, for her mother's last
letter had announced a danger which had never entered her thoughts as
being imminent. "Jimmy Woods will be in Washington soon. He is going up
with his uncle, who has some business at the patent office. I have given
him a note to Madam Chartley, granting him my permission to call on you.
He is in an agony of apprehension over the trip to Warwick Hall. He is
so afraid of meeting strange girls. But I tell him it will be good for
him. It is really amusing to see how interested everybody in town is
over Jimmy's going. Do be kind to the poor fellow for the sake of your
old childish friendship, no matter if he does seem a