have happened. Afterwards they both admitted that it was one of the
most peculiar coincidences they ever heard of. Pupkin owned that he
had had the strangest feeling that morning as if something were going
to happen--a feeling not at all to be classed with the one of which
he had once spoken to Miss Lawson, and which was, at the most, a mere
anticipation of respect.

But, as I say, Pupkin met Zena Pepperleigh on the 26th of June, at
twenty-five minutes to eleven. And at once the whole world changed.
The past was all blotted out. Even in the new forty volume edition
of the "Instalment Record of Humanity" that Mallory Tompkins had just
received--Pupkin wouldn't have bothered with it.

She--that word henceforth meant Zena--had just come back from her
boarding-school, and of all times of year coming back from a
boarding-school and for wearing a white shirt waist and a crimson tie
and for carrying a tennis racket on the stricken street of a
town--commend me to the month of June in Mariposa.

And, for Pupkin, straight away the whole town was irradiated with
sunshine, and there was such a singing of the birds, and such a
dancing of the rippled waters of the lake, and such a kindliness in
the faces of all the people, that only those who have lived in
Mariposa, and been young there, can know at all what he felt.

The simple fact is that just the moment he saw Zena Pepperleigh,
Mr. Pupkin was clean, plumb, straight, flat, absolutely in love with
her.

Which fact is so important that it would be folly not to close the