“Did you notice Noble when he read it?” asked Aunt Carrie.

“Yessir!  And would you believe it; he just looked too happy!” Florence made answer, not wholly comprehending with what truth.

“I’ll bet,” said Uncle Joseph;—­“I’ll bet a thousand dollars that if Julia told Noble Dill he was six feet tall, Noble would go and order his next suit of clothes to fit a six-foot man.”

And his wife complemented this with a generalization, simple, yet of a significance too little recognized.  “They don’t see a thing!” she said.  “The young men that buzz around a girl’s house don’t see a thing of what goes on there!  Inside, I mean.”

Yet at that very moment a young man was seeing something inside a girl’s house a little way down that same street.  That same street was Julia’s Street and the house was Julia’s.  Inside the house, in the library, sat Mr. Atwater, trying to read a work by Thomas Carlyle, while a rhythmic murmur came annoyingly from the veranda.  The young man, watching him attentively, saw him lift his head and sniff the air with suspicion, but the watcher took this pantomime to be an expression of distaste for certain versifyings, and sharing that distaste, approved.  Mr. Atwater sniffed again, threw down his book and strode out to the veranda.  There sat dark-haired Julia in a silver dress, and near by, Newland Sanders read a long young poem from the manuscript.

“Who is smoking out here?” Mr. Atwater inquired in a dead voice.

“Nobody, sir,” said Newland with eagerness. “I don’t smoke.  I have never touched tobacco in any form in my life.”

Mr. Atwater sniffed once more, found purity; and returned to the library.  But here the air seemed faintly impregnated with Orduma cigarettes.  “Curious!” he said as he composed himself once more to read—­and presently the odour seemed to wear away and vanish.  Mr. Atwater was relieved; the last thing he could have wished was to be haunted by Noble Dill.

Yet for that while he was.  Too honourable to follow such an example as Florence’s, Noble, of course, would not spy or eavesdrop near the veranda where Julia sat, but he thought there could be no harm in watching Mr. Atwater read.  Looking at Mr. Atwater was at least the next thing to looking at Julia.  And so, out in the night, Noble was seated upon the top of the side fence, looking through the library window at Mr. Atwater.

After a while Noble lit another Orduma cigarette and puffed strongly to start it.  The smoke was almost invisible in the moonlight, but the night breeze, stirring gently, wafted it toward the house, where the open window made an inward draft and carried it heartily about the library.

Noble was surprised to see Mr. Atwater rise suddenly to his feet.  He smote his brow, put out the light, and stamped upstairs to his own room.

His purpose to retire was understood when the watcher saw a light in the bedroom window overhead.  Noble thought of the good, peculiar old man now disrobing there, and he smiled to himself at a whimsical thought:  What form would Mr. Atwater’s embarrassment take, what would be his feeling, and what would he do, if he knew that Noble was there now, beneath his window and thinking of him?