“He told me about it,” said Peter.

“He really was the soul of it,” said Miss Pierce, “He wove himself a belt and chaplet of it and wore it all through the evening.  He was so good-looking!”

Peter, quite unconscious that he had said anything, actually continued:  “He was voted the handsomest man of the class.”

“Was he really?  How nice!” said Miss Pierce.

“Yes,” said Peter.  “And it was true.”  Peter failed to notice that a question had been asked, or that he had answered it.  He began to think that he would like to look at Miss Pierce for a moment.  Miss Pierce, during this interval, remarked to herself:  “Yes.  That was the right way, Helen, my dear.”

“We had quite a houseful for our party,” Miss Pierce remarked, after this self-approval.  “And that reminds me that I must tell you about whom you meet to-day.”  Then the next ten minutes were consumed in naming and describing the two fashionable New York girls and their brother, who made the party then assembled.

During this time Peter’s eyes strayed from Watts’s shapely back, and took a furtive glance at Miss Pierce.  He found that she was looking at him as she talked, but for some reason it did not alarm him, as such observation usually did.  Before the guests were properly catalogued, Peter was looking into her eyes as she rambled on, and forgot that he was doing so.

The face that he saw was not one of any great beauty, but it was sweet, and had a most attractive way of showing every change of mood or thought.  It responded quickly too, to outside influence.  Many a girl of more real beauty was less popular.  People liked to talk to Miss Pierce, and many could not escape from saying more than they wished, impelled thereto by her ready sympathy.  Then her eyes were really beautiful, and she had the trimmest, dearest little figure in the world; “squeezable” was the word Watts used to describe it, and most men thought the same.  Finally, she had a pleasant way of looking into people’s eyes as she talked to them, and for some reason people felt very well satisfied when she did.

It had this effect upon Peter.  As he looked down into the large gray eyes, really slate-color in their natural darkness, made the darker by the shadows of the long lashes, he entirely forgot place and circumstances; ceased to think whose turn it was to speak; even forgot to think whether he was enjoying the moment.  In short he forgot himself and, what was equally important, forgot that he was talking to a girl.  He felt and behaved as he did with men.  “Moly hoses!” said Watts to himself on the front seat, “the old fellow’s getting loquacious.  Garrulity must be contagious, and he’s caught it from Mr. Pierce.”  Which, being reduced to actual facts, means that Peter had spoken eight times, and laughed twice, in the half hour that was passed between the station and the Shrubberies’ gate.

CHAPTER V.