ph. He chronicled these happenings
briefly and without emphasis. "Skipper dear," he would write in his
crude and hybrid hand, "I've made the Freshman team all right and it's a
pretty fair to middling bunch and I guess we'll stack up pretty well
against the Berkeley babes from what I hear, and they made me captain.
It seems kind of natural, and I have three fellows from the L. A.
team,--Burke and Estrada and Finley."

He was madly rushed by the best fraternities and chose naturally the
same one as Carter Van Meter,--one of the best and oldest and most
powerful. He made the baseball team in the spring, and the second fall
the San Francisco papers' sporting pages ran his picture often and
hailed him as the Cardinal's big man. Honor read hungrily every scrap of
print which came to her,--her stepfather taking care that every mention
of Jimsy King reached her. It was in his Sophomore year that he played
the lead in the college play and Honor read the newspapers limp and
limber--"James King in the lead did a remarkable piece of work." "King,
Stanford's football star, surprised his large following by his really
brilliant performance." "Well-known college athlete demonstrates his
ability to act." Honor knew the play and she could shut her eyes and
see him and hear him in the hero's part, and her love and pride warmed
her like a fire.

She had not gone home that first summer. Mildred Lorimer and Carter's
mother managed that, between them, in spite of Stephen's best efforts,
and, that decided, Jimsy King went with his father to visit one of the
uncles at his great _hacienda_ in old Mexico. Mrs. Van Meter and her son
spent his vacation on the Continent and had Honor with them the greater
part of the time. She met their steamer at Naples and Carter could see
the shining gladness of her face long before he could reach her and
speak to her, and he glowed so that his mother's eyes were wet.

"Honor!" He had no words for that first moment, the fluent Carter. He
could only hold both her hands and look at her.

But Honor had words. She gave back the grip of his hands and beamed on
him. "Carter! Carter, _dear_! Oh, but it's wonderful to see you! It's
_next_ best to having Jimsy himself!"

Marcia Van Meter winced with sympathy, but her son managed himself very
commendably. They went to Sorrento first, and stayed a week in a mellow
old hotel above the pink cliffs, and the boy and girl sat in the garden
which looked like a Maxfield Parri