One Wednesday afternoon, as Dink was lolling gorgeously on his window-seat, sniffing the alert air and waiting for the moment to go skipping over to the 'Varsity field for the game with a visiting school, a voice from below hailed him:

"Oh, you, Rinky Dink!"

Stover languidly extended his head and beheld Tough McCarty.

"Hello there, Dink."

"Hello yourself."

"Come over to the Woodhull and meet my family."

"What!" said Dink in consternation.

"They're over for the game. Hurry up now and help me out!"

Dink tried frantically to call him back, but Tough, as though to shut off a refusal, disappeared around the house. Dink returned to the room in a rage.

"What's the matter?" said the Tennessee Shad.

"I've got to go over and meet a lot of women," said Dink in disgust. "Confound Tough McCarty! That's a rotten trick to play on me. I'll wring his neck!"

"Go on now, make yourself beautiful!" said the Tennessee Shad, delighted. "Remember the whole school will be watching you."

"Shut up!" said Dink savagely, making the grand toilet, which consisted in putting on a high collar, exchanging his belt for a pair of suspenders and donning a pair of patent-leathers. "The place for women is at home! It's an outrage!"

He tied his necktie with a vicious lunge, ran the comb once through the tangled hair, glanced at his hands, decided that they would pass muster, slapped on his hat and went out, kicking the door open.

At the Woodhull, Tough hailed him from his window. Dink went up, bored and rebellious. The door opened, he found himself in Tough McCarty's room in the vortex of a crowd of fellow-sufferers. Over by the window-seat two fluffy figures, with skirts and hats on, were seated. He shook hands with both; one was Mrs. McCarty, the other was the daughter, he wasn't quite sure which. He said something about the delight which the meeting afforded him, and, gravitating into a corner, fell upon Butsey White, with whom he gravely shook hands.

"Isn't this awful?" said Butsey in a confidential whisper.

"Frightful!"

"What the deuce's got into Tough?"

"It's a rotten trick!"

"Let's hook it."

"All right. Slide toward the door."

But at this moment, when deliverance seemed near, Tough bore down and, taking Stover by the arm, drew him aside.

"I say, stick by me on this, old man," he said desperately. "Take 'em to the game with me, will you?"

"To the game!" cried Dink in horror. "Oh, Tough, come now, I say, I'm no fusser. I'm tongue-tied and pigeon-toed. Oh, I say, old man, do get some one else!"

But as Tough McCarty kept a firm grip on the lapel of his coat Dink suddenly found himself, with the departure of the other guests, a helpless captive. The first painful scraps of conversation passed in a blur. Before he knew it he was crossing the campus, actually walking, in full view of the school, at the side of Miss McCarty.

Her unconsciousness was paralyzing, perfectly paralyzing! Dink, struggling for a word in the vast desert of his brain, was overwhelmed with the ease with which his companion ran on. He stole a glance under the floating azure veil and decided, from the way the brilliant blue parasol swung from her hand, that she must be a woman of the world—thirty, at least.

He extracted his hands precipitately from the trousers pockets in which they had been plunged and buttoned the last button of his coat. Somehow, his hands seemed to wander all over his anatomy, like jibs that had broken loose. He tried to clasp them behind his back, like the Doctor, or to insert one between the first and second button of his coat, the characteristic pose of the great Corsican, according to his history. For a moment he found relief by slipping them, English fashion, into his coat pockets; but at the thought of being detected thus by the Tennessee Shad he withdrew them as though he had struck a hornet's nest.

The school, meanwhile, had gamboled past, all snickering, of course, at his predicament. In this state of utter misery he arrived at last at the field, where, to his amazement, quite a group of Fifth-Formers came up and surrounded Miss McCarty, chattering in the most bewildering manner. Dink seized the opportunity to drop back, draw a long sigh, reach madly behind for his necktie, which had climbed perilously near the edge of his collar, and shoot back his cuffs. He saw the Tennessee Shad and Dennis de Boru grinning at him from the crowd, and showed them his fist with a threatening gesture.

Then the game began and he was seated by Miss McCarty, unutterably relieved that the tension of the contest had diverted the entire attention of the school from his particular sufferings.

The excitement of the play for the first time gave him an opportunity to study his companion. His first estimate was undoubtedly correct; she was plainly a woman of the world. No one else could sit at such perfect ease, the cynosure of so many eyes. Her dress was some wonderful creation, from Paris, no doubt, that rustled with an alluring sound and gave forth a pleasant perfume.

The more he looked the more his eye approved. She was quite unusual—quite. She had style—a very impressive style. He had never before remembered any one who held herself quite so well, or whose head carried itself so regally. There was something Spanish, too, about her black hair and eyes and the flush of red in her cheeks.

Having perceived all this Dink began to recover from his panic and, with a desire to wipe out his past awkwardness, began busily to search for some subject with which gracefully to open up the conversation.

At that moment his eye fell upon his boot carelessly displayed and, to his horror, beheld there a gaping crack. This discovery drove all desire for conversation at once out of his head. By a covert movement he drew the offending shoe up under the shadow of the other.

"You hate this, don't you?" said a laughing voice.

He turned, blushing, to find Miss McCarty's dark eyes alive with amusement.

"Oh, now, I say, really——" he began.

"Of course, you loathe being dragged out this way," she said, cutting in. "Confess!"

Dink began to laugh guiltily.

"That's better," said Miss McCarty approvingly. "Now we shall get on better."

"How did you know?" said Dink, immensely mystified.

Miss McCarty wisely withheld this information, and before he knew it Dink was in the midst of a conversation, all his embarrassment forgot. The game ended—it had never been really important—and Dink found himself, actually to his regret, moving toward the Lodge.

There, as he was saying good-by with a Chesterfieldian air, Tough plucked him by the sleeve.

"I say, Dink, old man," he said doubtfully, "I'd like you to come over and grub with us. But I don't want to haul you over, you know——"

"My dear boy, I should love to!" said Dink, squeezing his arm eagerly.

"Honest?"

"Straight goods!"

"Bully for you!"

He had three-quarters of an hour to dress before dinner. He went to his room at a gallop, upsetting Beekstein and Gumbo on his volcanic way upward. Then for half an hour the Kennedy was thrown into a turmoil as the half-clothed figure of Dink Stover flitted from room to room, burrowed into closets, ransacked bureaus and departed, bearing off the choicest articles of wearing apparel. Meanwhile, the corridors resounded with such unintelligible cries as these:

"Who's got a collar, fourteen and a half?"

"Darn you, Dink, bring back my pants!"

"Who swiped my blue coat?"

"Who's been pulling my things to pieces?"

"Hi there, bring back my shoes!"

"Dinged if he hasn't gone off with my cuff buttons, too!"

"Oh you robber!"

"Body snatcher!"

"Dink, the fusser!"

"Who'd have believed it!"

Meanwhile, Dink, returning to his room laden with the spoils of the house, proceeded to adorn himself on the principle of selection, discarding the Gutter Pup's trousers for the gala breeches of the Tennessee Shad, donning the braided cutaway of Lovely Mead's in preference to an affair of Slush Randolph's which was too tight in the chest.

The Tennessee Shad, the Gutter Pup and Dennis de Brian de Boru watched the proceedings, brownie fashion, across the transom, volunteering advice.

"Why, look at Dink wash!"

"It's a regular annual, isn't it?"

"Look out for my pants!"

"I say, Dink, your theory's wrong. You want to begin by parting your hair—soak it into place, you know."

Stover, struck by this expert advice, approached the mirror and seized his comb and brush with determination. But the liberties of a rebellious people, unmolested for sixteen years, were not to be suddenly abolished. The more he brushed the more the indignant locks rose up in revolt. He broke the comb and threw it down angrily.

"Wet your hair," said the Tennessee Shad.

"Soak it in water," said the Gutter Pup.

"Soak it in witch-hazel," said Dennis. "It will make it more fragrant."

Dink hesitated:

"Won't it smell too much?"

"Naw. It evaporates."

Stover seized the bottle and inundated his head, made an exact part in the middle and drew the sides back in the fashion of pigeon wings.

"Now clap on a dicer," said the Gutter Pup approvingly, "and she'll come up and feed from your hand."

"Are you really in love?" said Dennis softly.

Stover, ignoring all comments, tied a white satin four-in-hand with forget-me-not embossings, which had struck his fancy in Fatty Harris' room, and inserted a stick-pin of Finnegan's.

"You ought to have a colored handkerchief to stick in your breast pocket," said the Gutter Pup, who began to yield to the excitement.

"Up his sleeve is more English, don't you know," said Dennis.

Stover stood brazenly before the mirror, looking himself over. The scrubbing he had inflicted on his face had left red, shining spots in prominent places, while his hair, slicked back and plastered down, gave him somewhat the look of an Italian barber on a Sunday off. He felt the general glistening effect without, in his innocence, knowing the remedy.

"Dink, you are bee-oo-tiful!" said Dennis.

"Be careful how you sit down," said the Tennessee Shad, thinking of the trousers.

"How are the shoes?" asked the Gutter Pup solicitously.

"Tight as mischief," said Dink, with a wry face.

"Walk on your heels."

Stover, with a last deprecating glance, opened the door and departed, amid cheers from the contributing committee.

When he arrived at the Lodge the dusky waitress who opened the door started back, as he dropped his hat, and sniffed the air. He went into the parlor, spoiling his carefully-planned entrance by tripping over the rug.

"Heavens!" said Tough, "what a smell of witch-hazel. Why, it's Dink. What have you been doing?"

Stover felt the temperature rise to boiling.

"We had a bit of a shindy," he said desperately, trying to give it a tragic accent, "and I bumped my head."

"Well, you look like a skinned rat," said Tough to put him thoroughly at his ease.

The angel, however, came to his rescue with solicitous inquiries and with such a heavenly look that Stover only regretted that he could not appear completely done up in bandages.

They went in to dinner, where Dink was so overwhelmed by the vision of Miss McCarty in all her transcendent charms that the effort of swallowing became a painful physical operation.

Afterward, Tough and his mother went over to Foundation House for a visit with the Doctor, and Dink found himself actually alone, escorting Miss McCarty about the grounds in the favoring dusk of the fast-closing twilight.

"Let's go toward the Green House," she said. "Will you take my cloak?"

The cloak settled the perplexing question of the hands. He wondered uneasily why she chose that particular direction.

"Are you sure you want to go there?" he said.

"Quite," she said. "I want to see the exact spot where the historic fight took place."

Stover moved uneasily.

"Dear me, what's the matter?"

"I never go there. I hate the place."

"Why?"

"I was miserable there," said Dink abruptly. "Hasn't Tough told you about it?"

"Tell me yourself," said the angelic voice.

Stover felt on the instant the most overpowering desire to confide his whole life's history, and being under the influence of a genuine emotion as well as aided by the obliterating hour, he began straight forward to relate the story of his months of Coventry in tense, direct sentences, without pausing to calculate either their vividness or their effect. Once started, he withheld nothing, neither the agony of his pride nor the utter hopelessness of that isolation. Once or twice he hesitated, blurting out:

"I say, does this bore you?"

And each time she answered quickly:

"No, no—go on."

They went back in the fallen night to the campus, and there he pointed out the spot where he had stood and listened to the singing on the Esplanade and made up his mind to return. All at once, his story ended and he perceived, to his utter confusion, that he had been pouring out his heart to some one whose face he couldn't see, some one who was probably smiling at his impetuous confidence, some one whom he had met only a few hours before.

"Oh, I say," he said in horror, "you must think me an awful fool to go on like this."

"No."

"You made me tell you, you know," he said miserably, wondering what she could think of him. "I never talked like this before—to any one. I don't know what made me confide in you."

This was untrue, for he knew perfectly well what had led him to speak. So did she and, knowing full well what was working in the tense, awkward boy beside her, she had no feeling of offense, being at an age when such tributes, when genuine, are valued, not scorned.

"I can just feel how you felt—poor boy," she said, perhaps not entirely innocent of the effect of her words. "But then, you have won out, haven't you?"

"I suppose I have," said Stover, almost suffocated by the gentleness of her voice.

"Charlie's told me all about the rest," she said. "Every one looks up to you now—it's quite a romance, isn't it?"

He was delighted that she saw it thus, secretly wondering if she really knew every point that could be urged in his favor.

"I suppose I'll kick myself all over the lot to-morrow," he said, choosing to be lugubrious.

"Why?" she said, stopping in surprise.

"For talking as I've done."

"You don't regret it?" she said softly, laying her hand on his arm.

Stover drew a long breath—a difficult one.

"No, you bet I don't," he said abruptly. "I'd tell you anything!"

"Come," she said, smiling to herself, "we must go back—but it's so fascinating here, isn't it?"

He thought he had offended her and was in a panic.

"I say, you did not understand what I meant."

"Oh, yes, I did."

"You're not offended?"

"Not at all."

This answer left Stover in such a state of bewilderment that all speech expired. What did she mean by that? Did she really understand or not?

They walked a little way in silence, watching the lights that fell in long lines across the campus, hearing through the soft night the tinkling of mandolins and the thrumming of guitars, a vibrant, feverish life that suddenly seemed unreal to him. They were fast approaching the Lodge. A sudden fear came to him that she would go without understanding what the one, the only night had been in his life.

"I say, Miss McCarty," he began desperately.

"Yes."

"I wish I could tell you——"

"What?"

"I wish I could tell you just what a privilege it's been to meet you."

"Oh, that's very nice."

He felt he had failed. He had not expressed himself well. She did not understand.

"I shall never forget it," he said, plunging ahead.

She stopped a little guiltily and looked at him.

"You queer boy," she said, too pleasantly moved to be severe. "You queer, romantic boy! Why, of course you're going to visit us this summer, and we're going to be good chums, aren't we?"

He did not answer.

"Aren't we?" she repeated, amused at a situation that was not entirely strange.

"No!" he said abruptly, amazed at his own audacity; and with an impulse that he had not suspected he closed the conversation and led the way to the Lodge.

When at last he and Tough were homeward bound he felt he should die if he did not then and there learn certain things. So he began with Machiavellian adroitness:

"I say, Tough, what a splendid mother you've got. I didn't get half a chance to talk to her. I say, how long will she be here?"

"They're going over to Princeton first thing in the morning," said Tough, who was secretly relieved.

A button on the borrowed vest popped with Stover's emotion.

"How did you get on with Sis?"

"First rate. She's—she's awful sensible," said Dink.

"Oh, yes, I suppose so."

"I say," said Dink, seeing that he made no progress, "she's been all around—had lots of experience, hasn't she?"

"Oh, she's bounded about a bit."

"Still, she doesn't seem much older than you," said Dink craftily.

"Sis—oh, she's a bit older."

"About twenty-two, I should say," said Dink hopefully.

"Twenty-four, my boy," said Tough unfeelingly. "But I say, don't give it away; she'd bite and scratch me all over the map for telling."

Stover left him without daring to ask any more questions—he knew what he wanted to know. He could not go to his room, he could not face the Tennessee Shad, possessor of the trousers. He wanted to be alone—to wander over the unseen earth, to gulp in the gentle air in long, feverish breaths, to think over what she had said, to grow hot and cold at the thought of his daring, to reconstruct the world of yesterday and organize the new.

He went to the back of chapel and sat down on the cool steps, under the impenetrable clouds of the night.

"She's twenty-four, only twenty-four," he said to himself. "I'm sixteen, almost seventeen—that's only seven years' difference."