"I don't know what you have in mind; some wild goose chase, probably. I
expect your friends would like it better if you spent your time right
here."

"Probably. I presume I shall end by doing a thesis on the 'color-words' in
Keats and Shelley. A penniless devil was no luck."

"Anybody has luck who can form the right circle. Stay where you are. A
circle formed here would do you much more good than a temporary one four
thousand miles away."

Voices were heard in the front yard. "There they come, now," Mrs. Phillips
said. She rose, and one more of the wayward cushions went to the floor. It
lay there unregarded,--a sign that a promising tete-a-tete was, for the
time being, over.




3

_COPE IS "ENTERTAINED"_


Mrs. Phillips stepped to the front door to meet the half dozen young people
who were cheerily coming up the walk. Cope, looking at the fallen cushions
with an unseeing eye, remained within the drawing-room door to compose a
further paragraph for the behoof of his correspondent in Wisconsin: