“And when will I have a chance to plunge into the jungle, do you think?”

“Any Saturday or Sunday that you happen to be in town.”

“Are you going to live in town?”

“For a while.  I’ve taken a house until the beginning of July.  I expect some friends over, and I want to entertain them.”

Jack felt the sky above become refulgent.  He was in the habit of spending every Saturday night in the city—­he and Burnett together.

“May I come as often as I like?” he asked.

“Certainly,” said she; “because you know if you should come too often I can tell the man at the door to say I’m ‘not at home’ to you.”

“But if he ever says:  ‘She’s not at home to you,’ I shall walk right in and fall upon the man that you are being at home to just then.”

“But he is a very large man,” said Mrs. Rosscott seriously; “he’s larger than you are, I think.”

Jack felt the blue heavens breaking up into thunderbolts for his head at this speech.

“But I’m ’way over six feet,” he said, his heart going heavily faster, even while he told himself that he might have known it, anyhow.

“He’s all of six feet two,” she said meditatively.  “I do believe he’s even taller.  I remember liking him at the first glance, just because he struck me as so royal looking.”

He was miserably conscious of acute distress.

“Do—­do you mind my smoking?” he stammered.

(Might have known that, of course, there was bound to be someone like that.)

“Not at all,” she rejoined amiably.  “I like the odor of cigarettes.  Shall I stop a little, while you set yourself afire?”

“It isn’t necessary,” he said.  “I can set myself afire under any circumstances.”

He lit a cigarette.

“Is he English?” he couldn’t help asking then.

“Yes,” she said; “I like the English.”

“You appear to like everything to-day.”  He did not intend to seem bitter, but he did it unintentionally.

(Confounded luck some fellows have.)

“I do.  I’m very well content to-day.”

He was silent, thinking.

“Well,” she queried, after a while.

He pulled himself together with an effort.

“I think perhaps it’s just as well,” he said.

“What is just as well?”

“That I know.”

“Know what?”

“About him.  I shan’t ever take the chances of calling on you now.”

She laughed.

“He wouldn’t put you out unless I told him to,” she said.  “You needn’t be too afraid of him, you know.”

His face grew a trifle flushed.

“I’m not afraid,” he said, as coldly as it was in him to speak; “but I’ll leave him the field.”

She turned and looked at him.

“The field?” she asked, with puzzled eyebrows.

“Yes.”

Then she frowned for an instant, and then a species of thought-ray suddenly flew across her face and she burst out laughing.