your face."

"Bambina, if you could coin your conversation——" Professor Parkhurst began.

"I am sorry to find you unreasonable about Jarvis, Professor."

He gazed at her, in his absent-minded, startled way. He had never understood her since she was first put into his hands, aged six months, a fluffy bundle of motherless babyhood. She never ceased to startle him. She was an enigma beyond any puzzle in mathematics he had ever brought his mind to bear upon.

"How old are you, Bambina?"

"Shame on you, and you a mathematician. If James is forty-five, and Bambina is two thirds of half his age, how old is Bambi? I'm nineteen."

His startled gaze deepened.

"Oh, you cannot be!" he objected.

"There you are. I told you figures lie. It says so in the family Bible, but maybe I'm only two."

"Nineteen years old! Dearie me!"

"You see I'm quite old enough to know my own mind. Have you a nine o'clock class this morning?"

"I have."

"Well, hasten, Professor, or you'll get a tardy mark. It's ten minutes of nine now."

He jumped up from his chair and started for the door.

"Don't you want this notebook?" she called, taking up the pad beside his plate.

"Yes, oh, yes, those are my notes. Where have I laid my glasses? Quick, my dear! I must not be late."

"On your head," said she.

She followed him to the hall, reminded him of his hat, his umbrella, restored the notebook, and finally saw him off, his thin back, with its scholarly stoop, disappearing down the street.

Bambina went back to the breakfast table, and took up the paper. She read all the want "ads" headed "female."

"Nothing promising here," she said. "I wonder if I could bring myself to teach little kids one, two, and one, two, three, in a select dancing class? I'd loathe it."

A ponderous black woman appeared in the door and filled it.

"Is you froo?"

"Yes, go ahead, Ardelia."

"Hab the Perfessor gone already?"

"Yes, he's gone."

"Well, he suttinly did tell me to remin' him of suthin' this mohnin', and I cain't des perzactly bemember what it was."

"Was it important?"

"Yassum. Seemed lak I bemember he tell me it was impo'tant."

"Serves him right for not telling me."

"It suttinly am queer the way he can't bemember. Seem lak his haid so full of figgers, or what you call them, ain' no room for nuthin' else."

"You and father get zero in memory—that's sure."

"I ain't got no trubble dat way, Miss Bambi. I bemember everything, 'cepting wot you tell me to bemember."

The dining-room door flew open at this point, and a handsome youth, with his hair upstanding, and his clothes in a wrinkle, appeared on the threshold. Bambi rose and started for him.

"Jarvis!" she exclaimed. "What has happened? Where have you been?"

"Sleeping in the garden."

"Dat's it—dat's it! Dat was wat I was to remin' the Perfessor of, dat a man was sleepin' in the garden."

"Sleeping in our garden? But why?"

"Because of the filthy commercialism of this age! Here I am, at the climax of my big play, a revolutionary play, I tell you, teeming with new and vital ideas, for a people on the down-slide, and a landlady, a puny, insignificant ant of a female, interrupts me to demand money, and when I assure her, most politely, that I have none, she puts me out, actually puts me out!"

Bambi choked back a laugh.

"Why didn't you come here?"

"I did. Your father refused to see me; he was working at his crazy figures. I burst in, and demanded you, but he couldn't remember where you had gone."

"What a pity! Well——"

"I told him I would wait in the garden. If necessary, I would sleep there."

"Yas'm, yas'm, dat's when he called me in, to tell me to bemin' him."

"That will do, Ardelia."

"Yassum," said the handmaiden, and withdrew.

"Now, go on."

"I was full of my big act, so I walked and walked for hours. Then I lay down in the summer-house, and I must have gone to sleep."

"Go up and take a bath, and come down to some breakfast. I will send Ardelia to get some of father's things for you if you need them."

"All right, but don't delay with breakfast. If I don't get this act down, I may lose it. That fiend, in female guise, held my paper."

"Go on! Get ready!"

He plunged out, and Bambi went to send Ardelia to him, while she cooked his eggs and fried his bacon. As she worked, she smiled, out of sheer amusement.

In due course of time, he appeared, freshened up, and with renewed eagerness to be at work. He scarcely noticed Bambina as she served his breakfast. He ate as if he were starved.

"I suppose the landlady held your clothes?"

"I don't know. I didn't ask. It was unimportant."

"How much do you owe her?"

He looked at her in surprise.

"I have no idea."

"Have you any money at all?"

"Certainly not. I'd have given it to her if I had, so she wouldn't interrupt me."

"What are you going to do?"

"Oh, I don't know. I can't think about it now. I am full of this big idea. It's a dramatization of the Brotherhood of Man, of a sublime, socialistic world——"

"Has it occurred to you, ever, Jarvis, that the world isn't ready for the Brotherhood of Man yet? It's just out of the tent stage, where War is the whole duty of Man."

"But it must be ready," he urged, seriously, "for I am here with my message."

She smiled at him as one would at a conceited child.

"Poor old Jarvis, strayed out of Elysian fields! Were you thinking of sleeping in the summer-house permanently?"

"Oh, it doesn't matter; only the play matters. Give me some paper, Bambi, and let me get to work."

She rose and went to stand before him.

"Would you mind looking at me?"

He turned his eyes on her.

"Not just your eyes, Jarvis. Look at me with your mind."

"What's the matter with you?" he asked, slightly irritated.

"Do you like my looks?"

"I've never noticed them."

"That's what I'm asking you to do. Look me over."

He stared at her.

"Yes, you're pretty—you're very pretty. Some people might call you beautiful."

"Don't overdo it, Jarvis! Have you ever noticed my disposition?"

"No—yes. Well, I know you're patient, and you must be good-natured."

"I am. I am also healthy and cheerful."

"I don't doubt it. Where is the paper?"

She put her hands on his shoulders and shook him gently.

"Jarvis, I want you to give me your full attention for five minutes."

"What ails you to-day, Bambi?"

"The only thing I lack is a useful education, so that I am not sure I can make a very big living just at first, unless I dance on the stage."

"What are you driving at?"

"Would you have any special objection to marrying me, Jarvis?"

"Marrying you? Are you crazy?"

"Obviously. Have you?"

"Certainly I won't marry you. I am too busy. You disappoint me, Bambi; you do, indeed. I always thought you were such a sensible girl——"

"Father can help out a little, at first, but I may as well tell you, he doesn't approve of you as a son-in-law."

"I don't approve of him, impractical dreamer! Where is that paper?"

"You've got to be taken care of until you get an awful tumble. Then you will wake up and do big things, but in the meantime you must eat."

"You talk nonsense, and you're interrupting me. If I don't get at that scene——"

"Will you marry me? I can't take care of you if you don't, because the neighbours will talk."

"I won't marry you. I don't love you."

"No more do I love you. That's got nothing to do with it. Here's one of father's empty notebooks. Say yes, and you can have it."

His eyes fairly glistened as they fell on the book.

"For heaven's sake, don't torture me. Give me the book and have it your own way, whatever it is you want."

She laughed, gave him the book, and he was