hat
tumbled middy-blouse. Her hair was wopsed around her head anyhow--it
really takes one of Rose's own words to describe it. As a toilet
representing the total accomplishment of a morning, it was nothing to
boast of. But, if you'd been sitting there, invisibly, where you could
see her, you'd have straightened up and drawn a deeper breath than you'd
indulged in lately, and felt that the world was distinctly a brighter
place to live in than it had been a moment before.

She came up behind Portia, whom she had not seen before that day, and
enveloped her in a big lazy hug.

"Back to work another Saturday afternoon, Angel?" she asked
commiseratingly. "Aren't you ever going to stop and have any fun?" Then
she slumped into a chair, heaved a yawning sigh and rubbed her eyes.

"Tired, dear?" asked her mother. She said it under her breath in the
hope that Portia wouldn't hear.

"No," said Rose. "Just sleepy." She yawned again, turned to Portia, and,
somewhat to their surprise, said: "Yes, what do you mean--the _real_
Rodney Aldrich? He looked real enough to me. And his arm felt real--the
one he was going to punch the conductor with."

"I didn't mean he was imaginary," Portia explained. "I only meant I
didn't believe it was the Rodney Aldrich--who's so awfully prominent;
either somebody else who happened to have the same name, or somebody who
just--said that was his name."

"What's the matter with the prominent one?" Rose wanted to know. "Why
couldn't it have been him?"

Portia admitted that it could, so far as that went, but insisted on an
inherent improbability. A millionaire, a member of one of the oldest
families in the city--a social swell, the brother of that Mrs. Martin
Whitney whose pictures the papers were always publishing on the
slightest excuse--wasn't likely to be found riding in street-cars, in
the first place, and the improbability reached a climax during a furious
storm like that of last night, when, if ever during the year, the real
Rodney Aldrich would be saying, "Home, James," to a liveried chauffeur,
and sinking back luxuriously among the whip-cord cushions of a palatial
limousine.

I hasten to say that these were not Portia's words; all the same, what
Portia did say, formed a basis for Rose's unspoken caricature.

"Millionaires have legs," she said aloud. "I bet they can walk around
like anybody else. However, I don't care who he is, if he'll send back
my books."

Portia went back presently to th