cid
self-satisfied Fairy felt a twinge of something like envy.

"You look like a creature from another world, Prue," she said. "If
Professor Rayburn has any sense in his bones, he will fall dead in love
with you,--bugs or no bugs!"

"People do not have sense in their bones, Fairy, and--and--shall I say
professor, or just plain Mister?"

"Professor, I suppose,--every one calls him professor."

"Then I shall say Mister," said Prudence. "It will be so hard to enjoy
myself if I keep remembering that he teaches bugs! I might as well be
at school. I shall say Mister."

And she did say "Mister," and she said it so sweetly, and looked up
into Professor Rayburn's face so brightly, and with happiness so
evident and so girlish, that the staid professor felt a quick
unaccountable throbbing down somewhere beneath his coat. He did look
eager! There was no doubt of it. And he looked at Prudence,
continuously.

"Just like ordinary men, isn't he?" whispered Fairy to Eugene
Babler,--called "Babbie," for short and for humiliation,--for he
enjoyed the reputation of being a "talker" even among college men!

The three young couples struck off briskly down the road, creek-ward,
and Prudence followed sedately with her professor.

"Fairy says it was perfectly disgusting of me to tell you I didn't know
anything about bugs," she said comfortably. "But I thought maybe, you
were one of those professors who like one thing so much they can't be
interested in anything else. And I wanted to warn you. But I guess
you aren't that kind, after all?"

"Oh, no, indeed," he assured her fervently, looking deep into her blue
eyes. "I like bugs, it is true. But really I like other things, one
thing at least, much better."

"Is it a riddle?" she inquired. "Am I supposed to guess?"

"It isn't a riddle, but you may guess. Think hard, now! It's a
serious matter. Please don't say 'food.'"

"If I get below seventy will I be put down a grade?" she asked. Then
with intense solemnity, "I guess girls."

They laughed together, youthfully. "You are right," he said.

And with a sigh of relief, Prudence answered, "That's the first time I
ever got a hundred in anything in my life. I was very much accustomed
to eighties when I was in school. I am very common and unbrilliant,"
she assured him. "Fairy says you are perfectly horribly clever----"

She glanced up when she heard his exclamation, and laughed at his
rueful face. "Oh, that isn't