ty a trifle fagged.

The afternoon train had been vexatiously late. The little novelist had
found it tedious to interchange inanities with the committee awaiting
him at the Pullman steps. Nor had it amused him to huddle into
evening-dress, and hasten through a perfunctory supper in order to
reassure his audience at half-past eight precisely as to the
unmitigated delight of which he was now conscious.

Nevertheless, he alluded with enthusiasm to the arena of life, to the
dependence of America's destiny upon the younger generation, to the
enviable part King's College had without exception played in history,
and he depicted to Fairhaven the many glories of Fairhaven--past,
present and approaching--in superlatives that would hardly have seemed
inadequate if applied to Paradise. His oration, in short, was of a
piece with the amiable bombast that the college students and Fairhaven
at large were accustomed to applaud at every Finals--the sort of
linguistic debauch that John Charteris himself remembered to have
applauded as an undergraduate more years ago than he cared to
acknowledge.

Pauline Romeyne had sat beside him then--yonder, upon the fourth bench
from the front, where now another boy with painstakingly plastered hair
was clapping hands. There was a girl on the right of this boy, too.
There naturally would be. Mr. Charteris as he sat down was wondering
if Pauline was within reach of his voice? and if she were, what was
her surname nowadays?

Then presently the exercises were concluded, and the released auditors
arose with an outwelling noise of multitudinous chatter, of shuffling
feet, of rustling programs. Many of Mr. Charteris' audience, though,
were contending against the general human outflow and pushing toward
the platform, for Fairhaven was proud of John Charteris now that his
colorful tales had risen, from the semi-oblivion of being cherished
merely by people who cared seriously for beautiful things, to the
distinction of being purchasable in railway stations; so that, in
consequence, Fairhaven wished both to congratulate him and to renew
acquaintanceship.

He, standing there, alert and quizzical, found it odd to note how
unfamiliar beaming faces climbed out of the hurly-burly of retreating
backs, to say, "Don't you remember me? I'm so-and-so." These were the
people whom he had lived among once, and some of these had once been
people whom he loved. Now there was hardly any one whom at a glance he