In the aperture stood my amazing neighbour ... Frontispiece

I found myself staring as if stupefied at the white figure of a woman
who stood in the topmost balcony.

I sat bolt upright and yelled: "Get out!"

We faced each other across the bowl of roses

Up to that moment I had wondered whether I could do it with my left hand




CHAPTER I

I MAKE NO EFFORT TO DEFEND MYSELF

I am quite sure it was my Uncle Rilas who said that I was a fool. If
memory serves me well he relieved himself of that conviction in the
presence of my mother--whose brother he was--at a time when I was
least competent to acknowledge _his_ wisdom and most arrogant in
asserting my own. I was a freshman in college: a fact--or condition,
perhaps,--which should serve as an excuse for both of us. I possessed
another uncle, incidentally, and while I am now convinced that he must
have felt as Uncle Rilas did about it, he was one of those who suffer
in silence. The nearest he ever got to openly resenting me as a freshman
was when he admitted, as if it were a crime, that he too had been in
college and knew less when he came out than when he entered. Which was
a mild way of putting it, I am sure, considering the fact that he