supply the words she had
failed to summon, though he knew what he would have said could he but
have untangled his enthralled tongue.

"Oh, I'm no mystery!" He tried to laugh away his awkwardness. "I'm as
plain as an old shoe; no frills about me. You ask the boys that work
with me."

She was unconvinced. He saw her shake her wise little head and twist her
fingers together as she answered:

"A girl I know who saw you on the platform that day said she'd bet you'd
had an unfortunate love-affair. She said nothing else would make as--as
fine a young man as you are shun all the girls like you do. She even
hinted that maybe you were--were married down in Georgia and for some
reason or other was not telling it."

"Oh no, I'm not married," he laughed. "Gee! Sam would think that is
funny. Me married!"

"Then you _have_ had a--a love-affair with some girl, and--"

"Wrong again!" he laughed, deep in the throat of his ebullient joy.
"I've just been a sort of stay-at-home, pretty busy, you know. I've had
my hands full of night work, figuring, writing, and planning, and
through the day I've been hard at it, as a general thing. No, I'm just,
I reckon, not a natural ladies' man." How could he explain to her what
he had never understood or even tried to fathom, the reason why he was
different from other young men of his age whose manner of life he had
only superficially observed?

Tilly seemed still unconvinced. "That girl was Sally Teasdale," she went
on. "She was here yesterday. You may remember her--the tall, dark-haired
girl that sang in the choir that day and turned my music for me once.
She is going to have a party at her house down the road Wednesday night.
She is--is dead set on having you there. She says all the girls want to
get acquainted with you, and she--she wanted me to--to take you to it."

"To take me to it?" he repeated, hardly understanding what was really
meant, for how could a young lady be asking him to a party at her house
when no home of that sort had ever been open to him? How could that be
true, and that another girl of Tilly's social rank should really be
inviting him to escort her?

"I see, you don't want to go," Tilly said, with a touch of mild
resentment. "Well, that is for you to decide, and I would not have asked
you but there was no way out of it. Even mother advised me to mention
it."

Never had his confusion been greater. "Why, I want to go!" he blurted
out. "I don't see how you could doubt