"Amy?"

"Yes, Amy. _My_ Amy."

"Your Amy?"

"Off with you,--parrot! And bring a fork too."

Cope lapsed back into his frown and recrossed the room. The girl behind the
samovar felt that her hair was unbecoming, after all, and that her ring,
borrowed for the occasion, was in bad taste. Cope turned back with his
plate of cake and his fork. Well, he had been promoted from a "boy" to a
"fellow"; but must he continue a kind of methodical dog-trot through a
sublimated butler's pantry?

"That's right," declared Mrs. Phillips, on his return, as she looked
lingeringly at his shapely thumb above the edge of the plate. "Come, we
will sit down together on this sofa, and you shall tell me all about
yourself." She looked admiringly at his blue serge knees as he settled down
into place. They were slightly bony, perhaps; "but then," as she told
herself, "he is still quite young. Who would want him anything but
slender?--even spare, if need be."

As they sat there together,--she plying him with questions and he, restored
to good humor, replying or parrying with an unembarrassed exuberance,--a
man who stood just within the curtained doorway and flicked a small graying
moustache with the point of his forefinger took in the scene with a
studious regard. Every small educational community has its scholar
_manque_--its haunter of academic shades or its intermittent dabbler