Porter, picked up on the way, came in with the others, to behold that glowing corner, and those two together.

With his red crest flaming, he advanced upon them.

“Somebody said ‘tea.’  May I have some, Mary?”

“When the kettle boils.”  She had risen, and was holding out her hand to him.

As the two men shook hands, Porter was conscious of some subtle change in Roger.  What had come over the man—­had he dared to make love to Mary?

And Mary?  He looked at her.

She was serenely filling her tea ball.  She had lighted the lamp beneath her kettle, and the blue flame seemed to cast her still further back among the shadows of her corner.

Grace Clendenning and Aunt Frances had come back with the rest for tea.  Grace’s head, with Porter’s, gave the high lights of the scene.  Barry had nicknamed them the “red-headed woodpeckers,” and the name seemed justified.

While Porter devoted himself to Grace, however, he was acutely conscious of every movement of Mary’s.  Why had she given up her afternoon to Roger Poole?  He had asked if he might come, and she had said, “after four,” and now it was after four, and the hour which she would not give him had been granted to this lodger in the Tower Rooms.

It has been said before that Porter was not a snob, but to him Mary’s attitude of friendliness toward this man, who was not one of them, was a matter of increasing irritation.  What was there about this tall thin chap with the tired eyes to attract a woman?  Porter was not conceited, but he knew that he possessed a certain value.  Of what value in the eyes of the world was Roger Poole—­a government clerk, without ambition, handsome in his dark way, but pale and surrounded by an air of gloom?

But to-night it was as if the gloom had lifted.  To-night Roger shone as he had shone on the night of the Thanksgiving party—­he seemed suddenly young and splendid—­the peer of them all.

It came about naturally that, as they drank their tea, some one asked him to recite.

“Please “—­it was Mary who begged.

Porter jealously intercepted the look which flashed between them, but could make nothing of it.

“The Whittington one is too long,” Roger stated, “and I haven’t Pittiwitz for inspiration—­but here’s another.”

Leaning forward with his eyes on the fire, he gave it.

It was a man’s poem.  It was in the English of the hearty times of Ben Jonson and of Kit Marlowe—­and every swinging line rang true.

  “What will you say when the world is dying? 
  What when the last wild midnight falls,
  Dark, too dark for the bat to be flying
  Round the ruins of old St. Paul’s? 
  What will be last of the lights to perish? 
  What but the little red ring we knew,
  Lighting the hands and the hearts that cherish
  A fire, a fire, and a friend or two!”

  CHORUS: 
  “Up now, answer me, tell me true. 
  What will be last of the stars to perish? 
  —­The fire that lighteth a friend or two.”