“Hanged if I think I could manage the rights!” Jack said.  “Spelling is not my forte, and Howard, who is great at it, missed the last one.”

“How is Mr. Howard?” Eloise asked, and Jack replied, “All right.  Has gone to church like a good Christian.  I ought to have gone, but I thought I’d come here, as you might be lonely here alone.”

It flashed through Eloise’s mind to wonder how he knew she was alone, but she made no comment, except to say that the rector, Mr. Arthur Mason, called upon her the day before.

“Did he?” Jack said.  “I believe he is a fine fellow.  Howard likes him, but for some reason the Colonel does not, and when Howard said he was going to church, and suggested bringing Mr. Mason home to lunch, he growled out something about not liking company on Sunday.  He is a queer old cove, and does not seem to care for anybody but Miss Amy.  He is devoted to her, and she is a lovely woman, and must once have been brilliant, but she puzzles me greatly.  She seems to be rational on every subject except her life in California.  If any allusion is made to that she looks dazed at once, and says, ’I can’t talk about it.  I don’t remember.’”

“My father died in California, and my mother is there now,” Eloise said sadly.

Jack had not supposed she had a mother.  Mrs. Brown, who sat beside him at the commencement exercises in Mayville, had spoken of her as an orphan, and he replied, “I had somehow thought your mother dead.”

“No; oh, no!” Eloise answered quickly.  “She is not dead; she is—­”

She stopped suddenly, and Jack knew by her voice that her mother was a painful subject, and he began at once to speak of something else.  He was a good talker, and Eloise a good listener, and neither took any heed to the lapse of time, until there was the sound of wheels before the house.  A carriage had stopped to let some one out; then it went on, and Howard Crompton came up the walk and knocked at the door just as Jack had done an hour before.

“Pull the bobbin and come in,” Jack called out, and, a good deal astonished, Howard walked in, looking unutterable things when he saw Jack there before him, seemingly perfectly at home and perfectly happy, and in very close proximity to Eloise, who wondered what Mrs. Biggs would say if she came and found both the “high bucks” there.

“Hallo!” Jack said, while Howard responded, “Hallo!  What brought you here?”

“A wish to see Miss Smith.  What brought you?” was Jack’s reply, and Howard responded, “A wish to see Miss Smith, of course.  You didn’t suppose I came to see Mrs. Biggs, did you?  Where is the old lady?”

Eloise explained that she had gone to church, and Jack told of the key under the mat, and the talk flowed on; and Eloise could not forbear telling them of Mrs. Biggs’s wish not to have the Sabbath “desiccated” by visitors.

“A regular Mrs. Malaprop,” Jack said, while Howard suggested that they leave before she came home.  “We can put the key under the mat, and she’ll never know of the ‘desiccation,’” he said.