pincushion.

He was awfully relieved.

"Good," he said. "You know, I like the way you say that. It's
so--well, it's so competent." He got out a notebook and wrote "Miss
Brown, piano selections."

It was while he was writing that Jane Brown had a sort of mental
picture--the shabby piano at home, kicked below by many childish
feet, but mellow and sweet, like an old violin, and herself sitting
practising, over and over, that part of Paderewski's Minuet where,
as every one knows, the fingering is rather difficult, and outside
the open window, leaning on his broom, worthless Johnny Fraser,
staring in with friendly eyes and an extremely dirty face. To
Twenty-two's unbounded amazement she flung down the cushion and made
for the little ward linen room.

He found her there a moment later, her arms outstretched on the
table and her face buried in them. Some one had been boiling a
rubber tube and had let the pan go dry. Ever afterward Twenty-two
was to associate the smell of burning rubber with Jane Brown, and
with his first real knowledge that he was in love with her.

He stumped in after her and closed the door, and might have ruined
everything then and there by taking her in his arms, crutch and
all. But the smell of burning rubber is a singularly permeating one,
and he was kept from one indiscretion by being discovered in
another.