ad gaily borrowed Fernolia's pronunciation of
Alicia's name), "I have brought you the butter-scotch your soul
hankers after. I fear you can never hope to grow up, Miss Leetchy,
while you cherish a jejune passion for butter-scotch."

"Oh, I don't know. It might have been fudge!" Alicia replied airily.
"But thank you, Mr. Jelnik: it was very nice of you to remember."

"Yes. I have such an excellent memory," said he, blandly. "Miss
Smith, this preserved ginger is laid at your shrine. If you offer me
a piece or two, I shall accept with thanks: I like preserved ginger,
myself.--Boris, you'll prefer butter-scotch. You may ask Miss Gaines
to give you a piece."

Miss Hopkins, it appeared, despised butter-scotch, and abhorred
preserved ginger.

"I saw The Author hiking across lots a while since. Nice,
open-hearted, neighborly man, The Author.--Oh, by the way, Miss
Smith: is it, or is it not written in the Book of Darwin that the
gadfly is one of the distinct evolutionary links in the descent of
man?"

"Good heavens, certainly not!" cried Miss Hopkins. And she looked
strangely upon Mr. Nicholas Jelnik.

"No? Thank you. I was in doubt," murmured Mr. Jelnik. The golden
flecks danced in and out of his eyes. "But we were speaking of The
Author: may I ask how The Author appeals to you as a human being,
Miss Hopkins?"

"I do not know him as a human being," Miss Hopkins admitted.

Mr. Jelnik looked surprised. His eyebrows went up.

"Oh, come, now!" he demurred. "He isn't so bad as all _that_!"

"Oh, dear me, no!" Alicia protested, in a shocked voice. "He may
have abrupt manners and say unexpected things, but he is perfectly
respectable, Miss Hopkins! There's never been a _breath_ against his
character. I thought you knew," purred the hussy, demurely. "Why,
he's dined at the White House, and lunched and motored and yachted
with royalties, and lectured before the D.A.R.'s themselves! And he
belongs to at least a dozen societies. There are,"--Alicia was
enjoying her naughty self immensely--"good authors and bad authors.
Sometimes the bad authors are good, and sometimes the good authors
are bad. But our author is more than either: he's It!"

"You entirely and strangely misunderstand me." Miss Hopkins spoke
with the deadly gentleness of suppressed fury. "I had no slightest
intention of reflecting upon the character of so eminent a writer,
with whose career, Miss Gaines, I am thoroughly familiar. I was
merely trying to explain