Burnett was fishing for his key ring.

“It’s a great old place, isn’t it?” he remarked parenthetically.  “Great Scott! but I’ll bet we have fun these two days!  And if my sister Betty is here—­” He paused expressively.

“Doesn’t she live at home?” Jack asked.

“She’s just come home; she’s been in England for three years.  Oh, but I tell you she’s a corker!”

“I should think—­”

The sentence was never completed because a voice without the not-altogether-closed door cried: 

“No, don’t think, please; let me come in instead.”  And in the same instant Burnett made one leap and flung the door open, crying as he did so: 

“Betty!”

Then Jack, bunching somewhat his starfish attitude, looked across the room and realized instantly that it was all up with him forever after.

Because—­

Because she who stood there in the door was quite the sweetest, the loveliest, the most interesting looking girl whom he had ever laid eyes on; and when she was seized in her brother’s arms, and kissed by her brother’s lips, and dragged by her brother’s hands well into the room, she proved to be a thousand times more irresistible than at first.

“I say, Betty, you’re absolutely prettier than ever,” her brother exclaimed, holding her a little off from him and surveying her critically; and then he seemed to remember his friend’s existence, and, turning toward him, announced proudly: 

“My sister Bertha.”

Jack was standing up now and thinking how lovely her eyes were just at that instant when they were meeting his for the first time, thinking much else too.  Thinking that Monday was only two days away (hang it!); thinking that such a smile was never known before; thinking that he had years ahead at college; thinking that the curl on her forehead was simply distracting (whereas all other like curls were horrid); thinking that he might cut college and—­

“My chum, Jack Denham,” Burnett continued, proving in the same instant how rapidly the mind may work since his friend had compassed his encyclopedia of sentiment and probability between the two halves of a formal introduction.

“Oh, I’m very glad to meet you, Mr. Denham,” she said, putting out her hand—­and he took and held it just long enough to realize that he really was holding it, before she took it away to keep for her own again.  “I’ve often heard of you, and often wished I might know you.”

“I’m awfully glad to hear you say that,” he said, “and if I should have the royal luck to be next to you at dinner, it doesn’t seem to me that I shall have the strength to keep from telling you why.”

She clapped her hands at this, just as a very little girl might have done.

“If that is so, I hope that they will put you next to me at dinner,” she said gayly; “but if they don’t, you’ll tell me some other time, won’t you?  I’m always so interested in what people have to tell me about myself.”