“Mr. Harwood made me an offer and I accepted it,” replied Rose.  “This is a free country and a P.W.G. can work where she pleases, can’t she?”

“P.W.G.?”

“Certainly, a poor working-girl”—­Rose clasped her hands and bowed her head—­“if the initials fail to illuminate.”

The Colonel inspected the room, and his eyes searched Miss Farrell’s desk.

“Let me see, I seem to miss something.  It must be the literary offerings that used to cluster about the scene of your labors.  Your selections in old times used to delight me.  No one else of my acquaintance has quite your feeling for romance.  I always liked that one about the square-jawed American engineer who won the Crown Princess of Piffle from her father in a poker game, but decided at the last minute to bestow her upon his old college friend, the Russian heir-apparent, just to preserve the peace of Europe.  I remember I found you crying over the great renunciation one day.”

“Oh, I’ve passed that all up, Colonel.  I’m strong for the pale high-brow business now.  I’m doing time in all the night classes at Elizabeth House where I board, and you’ll hardly know your little Rose pretty soon.”

“Fitting yourself for one of the learned professions?”

“Scarcely.  Just fitting myself to be decent,” replied Rose in a tone that shifted the key of the conversation—­a change which the Colonel respected.

“That’s right, Rose.  This is a good place for you, and so is Mrs. Owen’s boarding-house.  By the way, who’s this school-teacher Aunt Sally has taken up—­saw her at the party-great chum of the old lady’s.”

“You must mean Miss Sylvia.”

“Sylvia?”

“Miss Sylvia Garrison.  Colonel Ramsay,” continued Rose earnestly, resting an elbow lightly on her typewriter, “you and I are old pals—­you remember that first winter I was over at the State House?”

“Very well, Rose.”

“Well, it wasn’t a good place for me to be.  But I was a kid and hadn’t much sense.  I’ve learned a good deal since then.  It ain’t so easy to walk straight; so many people are careless about leaving banana peelings lying round.”

The Colonel nodded.

“You needn’t apologize to me, Rose.  It’s all right now, is it?”

“You can be dead sure of it, Colonel.  Miss Garrison caught me by the heel of my shoe, just as I was going down the third time, and yanked me back.  There’s a good many cheap imitations of human beings loose around this world, but that’s a woman, I can tell you!”

“Glad you struck a good friend, Rose.  You did well to come along with Harwood.”

“Well, she fixed that, too, after I cut loose from him—­you understand?  I guess Miss Garrison and Mr. Harwood are pretty good friends.”

“Oh!” ejaculated Ramsay.  “So there’s that, is there?”

“I hope so; they’re all white and speak the same language.  This is on the dead.  I’m only talking to you because you’re an old friend.”