I knew myself growing happier every minute.  The after-dinner coffee was not necessary to make, somewhere near my heart, little thrills jump up and down, like corn in a hot popper.  I was getting what my soul craved—­companionship, contact with life, and a glimpse into the doings of youth’s magic years.

We soon returned to the living-room.  Page prepared to smoke, and we settled down to a friendly, intimate time.

The talk turned to school.  Jane had been telling of a Japanese woman, who, handicapped by the loss of an arm, and no longer being useful in field work, trudged every morning eight miles to school where she could learn sewing so as to help husband and babies.

“Well!” remarked Zura doubtingly.  “I can’t sew with two hands, and my tongue thrown in.  I do not see how she manipulates anything so contrary as a needle, single-fisted.”

“Oh! my dear,” said Jane, “you can believe with one hand just as hard as you can with two.  It’s hoping with all your might, while one is doing, that makes our dreams come true.  I’m afraid you never really loved school.”

“Oh, yes, I did in spots,” she said.  “Especially if there were a fight on—­I mean—­a contest.  I could bear with cheerful resignation all the V.P’s., the B.B’s., and chilly zeros they tagged on to my deportment, but I would have worked myself into a family skeleton, before I would permit another girl to outclass me in a test exam!  I could forgive the intellectual her sunset hair, but her Grecian nose—­never!”

The methods employed by the two contestants as related by Zura had called forth my unqualified sympathy for the teacher when once again the gong on my front-door rang out and a voice was heard asking for Miss Wingate.

Zura jumped up from her seat and greeted the visitor with frank delight.  “Oh!” she said, “it’s Pinkey Chalmers!  Who’d believe it!  Hello, Pinkey!  My! but it is good to see somebody from home.”

There was ushered into the room a well nourished looking chap, who greeted Zura by her first name familiarly.  I did not need to be told that he was the young man with whom she had been seen on the highway.  He was introduced to me as Mr. Tom Chalmers; I was told he had earned his nickname, “Pinkey,” by contracting the pink-shirt habit.

The youth was carelessly courteous and very sure of himself.  My impression was that he had seen too much of the world and not enough of his mother.  He declined my invitation to dine, saying he had had late tea before he left the ship which was coaling in a nearby port.

“I started early,” he went on, “but maybe you think I didn’t have a great old time finding this place.  You said in your note, Zura, it was the ‘Misty Star’ at the top of the hill.  Before I reached here I thought it must be the last stopping-place in the Milky Way.  Climbing up those steps was something awful.”

Mr. Chalmers mopped his rosy brow, but later conversation proved his sensitiveness to feminine beauty quite overbalanced his physical exhaustion, as on the way many pretty girls peeped out from behind paper doors.