She paused, and he eagerly filled out the sentence:  “You would know me?  I hope you would!  Because, to tell the honest truth, literary research is a bit new and difficult to me as yet, and any diversion—­”

But she would not ask him to the corn-popping.  And he was obliged to finish his luncheon in short order because Roberta and Ted, plainly anxious to begin the afternoon’s program, made such short work of it themselves.  They bade him farewell at the door of the dining-room like a pair of lads who could hardly wait to be ceremonious in their eagerness to be off, and the last he saw of them they were running up the staircase hand in hand like the comrades they were.

During his intensely stupid researches Richard Kendrick could hear faintly in the distance the thud of the basket-ball and the rumble of the bowls.  But within the hour these tantalizing sounds ceased, and, in the midst of the fiercest dash of rain against the library window-panes that had yet occurred that day, he suddenly heard the bang of the back-hall entrance-door.  He jumped to his feet and ran to reconnoitre, for the library looked out through big French windows upon the lawn behind the house, and he knew that the pair of holiday makers would pass.

There they were!  What could the rain matter to them?  Clad in high hunting boots and gleaming yellow oilskin coats, and with hunters’ caps on their heads, they defied the weather.  Anything prettier than Roberta’s face under that cap, with the rich yellow beneath her chin, her face alight with laughter and good fellowship, Richard vowed to himself he had never seen.  He wanted to wave a farewell to them, but they did not look up at his window, and he would not knock upon the pane—­like a sick schoolboy shut up in the nursery enviously watching his playmates go forth to valiant games.

When they had disappeared at a fast walk down the gravelled path to the gate at the back of the grounds, taking by this route a straight course toward the open country which lay in that direction not more than a mile away, the grandson of old Matthew Kendrick went reluctantly back to his work.  He hated it, yet—­he was tremendously glad he had taken the job.  If only there might be many oases in the dull desert such as this had been!

* * * * *

“How do you like him, Rob?” inquired the young brother, splashing along at his sister’s side down the country road.

“Like whom?” Roberta answered absently, clearing her eyes of raindrops by the application of a moist handkerchief.

“Mr. Kendrick.”

“I think Uncle Cal might have looked a long way and not picked out a less suitable secretary,” said she with spirit.

“Is that what he is?  What is a seccertary anyway?” demanded Ted.

“Several things Mr. Kendrick is not.”

“Oh, I say, Rob!  I can’t understand—­”

“It is a person who has learned how to be eyes, ears, hands, and brain for another,” defined Roberta.