Malachi touch it--not Max at all, but a fresh, rosy-
cheeked young fellow of twenty-two, who came
bounding in with a laugh, tossing his hat to Malachi
--a well-knit, muscular young fellow, with a mouth
full of white teeth and a broad brow projecting over
two steel-blue eyes that were snapping with fun.

With his coming the quiet of the place departed
and a certain breezy atmosphere permeated the room
as if a gust of cool wind had followed him. With
him, too, came a hearty, whole-souled joyousness--
a joyousness of so sparkling and so radiant a kind
that it seemed as if all the sunshine he had breathed
for twenty years in Kennedy Square had somehow
been stored away in his boyish veins.

"Oh, here you are, you dear Miss Lavinia," he
cried out, his breath half gone from his dash across
the Square. "How did you get here first?"

"On my two feet, you stupid Oliver," cried Miss
Lavinia, shaking her curls at him. "Did you think
somebody carried me?"

"No, I didn't; but that wouldn't be much to
carry, Miss Midget." His pet name for her. "But
which way did you come? I looked up and down
every path and--"

"And went all the way round by Sue Clayton's