you, the man underneath."

"That's worse. You think I oughtn't to like myself as I am."

She looked up at him with intimate and sympathetic friendliness. "Well, do you?" was all she said.

"Whether I do or not, it's pretty evident what you think of me."

"It ought to be. I've introduced you to Fluff. One can't be too careful as to whom one introduces to one's young and guileless daughter."

"Thank you." For the first time in their acquaintance he smiled. The smile changed his face luminously.

She tossed the tiny iron with which she was working into the far corner of the studio. "That settles it," she said. "I'm through."

"For the day?"

"Wrong! All wrong!" she cried vehemently, disregarding his question. "Why did you have to go and smile that way? I haven't done you at all. Do you know what I've been sculping you as?"

"You wouldn't tell me, you know. Nothing very flattering, I judged."

"As a disenchanted and uncontrolled drifter."

"And now you think perhaps I'm not?"

"I don't know what you are, but I think I might as well be clicking the shutter of a camera, for all I've done with you. The point is, that I've come to the end of you for the present."

"You don't want me any more?" he cried, aghast.

"If I did, you wouldn't have time. I've got you a real man's job."

"What kind of slavery have you sold me into this time?"

"The steam-roller. I've used my influence—you don't know what a pull I've got around here—and I can name my man for the late night-shift. Will you take it?" His face was elate. "Will I take it! Will a duck eat pie?"

"I'm sure I don't know. Will it?"

"It will if it can't get anything else to eat. How long is this job good for?"

"All summer and more. How long are you?"

"Till released."

"You have made a promise. I'll enter it in my ledger." Which she did, writing it down in her absurd little booklet with a delicious solemnity of importance.

"But can't I come and sit for you afternoons?" he pleaded.

"How many wages do you want to earn? No; not at present. But Miss Fluff and I are at home to honest working friends on Friday evenings. Come here, Miss Fluff, and tell the new engineer that we'll be glad to have him come and tell us about the job when he's learned it." But the kitten paid no heed, being at that moment engaged in treacherously and scientifically stalking an imaginary butterfly along the window-sill.

"Before I'm banished," said Cyrus, "may I ask a question?"

"You might try it."

"Do you mind telling me your given name? Not for use," he added, as she looked up at him with her grave, speculative gaze, "but just as a guaranty of good faith. I set great store by other people's names, having been cursed since birth with my own Persian abomination."

"I don't think Cyrus is bad at all," she said. "Mine is Carol."

"Oh," said he blankly.

"Don't you like it?"

"It's a very nice name, for some people," he said guardedly.

"You don't like it. Why?"

There was no evading the directness of that demand. "I never knew but one girl named Carol," he said. "She squinted."

"What of it? I don't squint. Do I? Do I? DO I?"

With each repetition of her defiance she took one step nearer him, until at the last she was fairly standing on tiptoe under his nose. Cyrus the Gaunt looked down into those radiant eyes that grew wider and deeper and deeper and wider, until his heart, which had been slipping perilously of late, fell into them and was hopelessly lost. "Do I?" she demanded once more.

Cyrus responded with a loud yell. Inappropriate as the outcry was, it saved a situation becoming potentially dangerous, for not far below those luminous eyes was a dimple that flickered at the corner of a challenging mouth; unconsciously challenging, doubtless, yet—And then Fluff, opportunely descrying her imaginary butterfly on the side of Cyrus's trouser-leg, made a flying leap and drove ten keen claws through the fabric into the skin beneath. Her mistress dislodged the too ardent entomologist, and apologized demurely.

"You see," said she, "you've become an intimate of the household. When you're too busy to come and see us, Fluff and I will peek out and admire you as you go plunging past on your irresistible course."

"It's going to be a lonely job," said Cyrus the Gaunt wistfully, "compared to this one."

"Nonsense!" she retorted briskly as she handed him a dollar bill. "Here's your pay. You'll be too busy to be lonely. Good luck, Mr. Engineer."

II

Thus Cyrus the Gaunt became a toiler in, and by slow degrees a citizen of, Our Square. We are a doubtful people where strangers are concerned. The ritual of initiation for Cyrus was, at first, chance words and offhand nods, then an occasional bidding to sit in at Schwartz's, and finally consultations and confidences on matters of import, political, social, or private. Thus was Cyrus the Gaunt adopted as one of us. Quite from the outset of his job he became a notable pictorial asset of the place, standing out, lank and black, in the intermittent gleam of his own engine, as he rolled on his appointed course amidst firmamental thunderings. Acting as chauffeur to ten tons of ill-balanced metal, he promptly discovered, is an occupation to which the tyro must pay explicit heed if he would keep within the bounds of his precinct. About the time when he was beginning to feel at ease with his charger, he came to a stop, one misty night, directly opposite the window of a taxicab, and met a pair of eyes which straightway became fixed in a paralysis of amazed doubt.

"No; it isn't. It can't be," said the owner of the eyes presently.

"Yes, it is," contradicted Cyrus.

"Well, I'm jiggered!"

"That's all that the pious young Presbyterian boss of a fashionable church has a right to be."

"What are you doing up there?"

"Piloting a submarine under Governor's Island."

"So I see." The taxi-door opened, and some six feet of well-tailored manhood mounted nimbly to Cyrus's side. "What's the fare? And why? Is it a bet?"

Cyrus the Gaunt grinned amiably in the face of the Reverend Morris Cartwright, whose appearance in that quarter did not greatly surprise him. "How did you know? It's leaked out at the club, has it?"

"Not that I know of. I guessed it."

"Thought nothing short of a bet would account for such a reversal of form, eh? Keep it to yourself, and I'll tell you the rest."

"You've hired an ear," observed the young cleric.

"Maybe you heard that I had a nervous breakdown last spring. Kind of a mixture of things."

"Yes; I know the mixture. Three of gin to one of Italian."

"You know too much for a minister," growled the other. "Besides, it was only part that. I just sort of got sick of doing nothing and being nothing, and the sickness struck in, I expect. Well, one morning, after a night of bridge, I came out into the breakfast-room nine hundred plus to the good, and about ready to invest the whole in any kind of painless dope that would save me from being bored with this life any more. There sat Doc Gerritt, pink and smooth like a cherry-stone clam. I stuck out my hand, and it was shaking. I dare say my voice was shaking, too, for Gerry looked up pretty sharp, when I said, 'Doc, can you do anything for me?' 'No,' says he. 'Is it as bad as that?' I asked. 'It's worse,' says he. 'I'm a busy man with no time to waste on sure losses. Flat down, Cyrus, you aren't worth it.' 'This is all I've got of me,' I said. 'I'm worth it to myself.' 'Then do it for yourself,' he snapped. 'You're the only one that can.' 'Will you tell me how?' 'I will,' says he. 'But you won't do it. You aren't man enough.' 'Gerry,' I said, 'you may be a good doctor, but you're a damn liar.' 'Am I?' says he. 'Prove it. Cut