"Pah! I must have put in a quart of sugar. Can you spare me another
cup?"

"Annesley?" Nancy's face brightened. "Colonel Annesley? Why, I know
Betty Annesley. She was my room-mate at Smith one year. She was in my
graduating class. I'll show you her picture later. She was the
dearest girl! How she loved horses! But why are you so interested?"--
slyly.

"I ran across them coming home."

"Then you met Betty! Isn't she just the loveliest girl you ever saw?"

"I'm for her, one and indivisible. But hang my luck, I never came
within a mile of an introduction."

"What? You, and on shipboard where she couldn't get away?" John threw
up his hands as a sign that this information had overcome him.

"Even the captain shied when I approached him," said Robert,
gloomily.

"I begin to see," said the brother.

"See what?"

"Have a match; your cigar has gone out."

Robert relighted his cigar and puffed like a threshing-machine
engine.