crooked things than streets within a couple of miles of Harvard
Square, eh? Why, do you know, Francis and a couple of classmates were
caught in a raid there one night and lugged off to the station in a
patrol--I had to bail 'em out by wire. That's how _I_ know about the
place." And, discriminatingly, he selected a fresh cigar and lighted it.

"You--you don't mean they were really arrested?" I faltered.

He nodded grimly through a funnel of smoke. "How could they help being?
Why, dammit, they were too drunk to get away!" He settled in his seat
with a scowl. "I can tell you it was all I could do to stave off
expulsion!"

My jolly head spun. By Jove, Radcliffe girls must have moved on some
since my day! Then they were coldly intellectual--went in strong for the
earnest life, you know--the serious purpose existence--all that sort of
thing. All of us looked on them with more or less awe--that is, except
Smithers; he tried some intimate flirtations, one morning with a bunch
in the Botanic Gardens and got stung. _He_ said they were "prunes."

But _Frances_--and "Spot" McGinty's! Surely I had not heard aright.

I faced him earnestly. "I--er--Judge Billings, do I understand you--that
is, it can't be that you are speaking of--er--Frances?" I stammered
incredulously. "I mean _your_ Frances--surely you are not!"

"I just am!" His jaw set with a snap. "Just who I'm talking about and
nobody else, young man! I mean, _my_ Francis--Francis Leslie
Billings--who else could I mean?" He almost groaned. "Oh, you don't
_know_ Francis!"

Dash it, what they all chorused at me! They seemed pretty positive about
it, too, and I was jolly miserable; but looking back now, I somehow
think of that moment as being the point where I reached the parting of
the what-you-call-'ems. Didn't know what to think, but knew I had to
make up my mind right then and there--and for _always_, don't you know.
Knew, of course, that it was just pure _luck_ that Frances cared for
me--realized jolly well I wasn't particularly clever and all that, you
know; but _she_ didn't seem to mind. It was then that it came to me all
of a sudden that the only dashed thing in all the world that I could
give _her_, that she didn't seem to have already from somebody,
was--well just _trust_.

And, by Jove, as soon as I got hold of this perfectly corking idea, I
knew I had it for life, and--well, nothing else mattered in all the
world, you know!

Meantime, her father was studying