“What he meant I don’t know.  What I do know is that Amy has told me why the wind stops blowing when the sun goes down, but I’ll be hanged if I understand much about the rarefaction of the air.  Do you?  She was very glib with the sheep and the geese, but the grindstone made her head ache, and she gave it up.  I think, however, I have all the knowledge necessary to judge whether a girl is rooted and grounded, and now I want to know something about the girl.  Manage to see her while you are in Mayville.  Attend the commencement exercises.  She is sure to read an essay in a white gown.  Write me what she is like, and if I am likely to fall in love with her.  Come as soon as you can.

“Always your friend,

“HOWARD CROMPTON.”

CHAPTER II

JACK HARCOURT TO HOWARD CROMPTON

Mayville, July —­, 18—.

“Dear Howard: 

“That you are a scamp of the first water goes without saying, insinuating yourself into an eccentric old man’s confidence in hopes to be his heir!  I dare say, Amy is his daughter, and you will have to work for a living after all, and serve you right, too.  But have a good time while you can, and I’ll help you after a little, as I accept your invitation with pleasure.

“Now for the girl!  I have seen her, and if there was ever a case of love at first sight, I’m that case.  It was this way.  Mayville is not a very lively place, and when my sister, Mrs. Lovell, who you know has a summer home here, suggested one morning that we attend the commencement exercises of the Normal School, saying, that twenty-five or thirty young girls were to be graduated, I concluded that it was better than nothing.  I hate such places, as a rule, they are so close and stuffy, and the essays so long and dull, and the girls all look pretty much alike, and I begged Bell to get a seat as near the door as possible, so I could go out when it became unendurable.  Just then your letter was brought to me, and after reading it, nothing could have kept me from Eloise Smith.  I asked Bell if she knew her.

“‘I don’t know many of the girls by name,’ she said, ’but I have heard of Eloise Smith.  She sings in the choir, and is a basket-boarder of Mrs. Brown’s.’

“‘What the mischief is a basket-boarder?’ I asked, and Bell explained that girls sometimes hire a room, and bring their food from home, and have the family with whom they lodge cook it for them, or cook it themselves on the family stove.  A kind of picnic to get an education, you see, and just think of all we spent uselessly in college.  Why, it would keep a lot of basket-boarders.  Well, we started for the chapel, which was literally crammed, and the thermometer at ninety.  You know, Mr. Lovell is wealthy, and from New York, and that makes Bell a kind of swell woman in the place, while I fancy your humble servant had something to do with the attention we received.  Instead of a seat by the door, we