“I could hardly wait for breakfast, I was so anxious to ask about him.  I gleaned the following facts.  The landlady had packed his belongings in an old closet and rented me the room in his absence, as he surmised.  He is a darling old idiot who would rather buy the chauffeur a cigar than pay for his board.  He says it is less grubby.  He is too good a fellow to make both ends meet.  He is too devoted to his friends to neglect them for business.  He can write the best ads in Chicago and get the most money for it, but he can’t afford the time.  Mrs. Gaylord is a stingy old cat, she always gets her money if she waits long enough, and he pays three times as much as anything is worth when he does pay.  Mrs. Gaylord’s niece is infatuated with him, without reciprocation, and Mrs. Gaylord wanted her, the niece, to stick to the grocer’s son; she says there is more money in being advertised than advertising others.  Wouldn’t Prudence faint if she could hear this gossip?  Don’t tell her,—­and I wouldn’t repeat it for the world.

“I hoped he would come back for another room,—­there is lots of experience in him, I am sure, but he sent for his things.  So that is over.  I found his pipe.  And I am keeping it so if he gets smokey and comes back he may have it.

“Oh, I tell you, Carol, Experience may teach in a very expensive school, but she makes the lessons so interesting, it is really worth the price.

“Lots of love to you both,

“From

“Connie.”

CHAPTER XII

THE LAND O’ LUNGERS

“Is Mrs. Duke in?”

David looked up quickly as the door opened.  He saw a fair petulant face, with pouting lips, with discontent in the dark eyes.  He did not know that face.  Yet this girl had not the studied cheerfulness of manner that marks church callers at sanatoriums.  She did not look sick, only cross.  Oh, it was the new girl, of course.  Carol had said she was coming.  And she was not really sick, just threatened.

“Mrs. Duke is over at the Main Building, but will be back very soon.  Will you come in and wait?”

She came in without speaking, pulled a chair from the corner of the porch, and flounced down among the cushions.  David could not restrain a smile.  She looked so babyishly young, and so furiously cross.  To David, youth and crossness were incongruous.

“I am Nancy Tucker,” said the girl at last.

“And I am Mr. Duke, as you probably surmise from seeing me on Mrs. Duke’s porch.  She will be back directly.  I hope you are not in a hurry.”

“Hurry!  What’s the use of hurrying?  I am twenty years old.  I’ve got a whole lifetime to do nothing in, haven’t I?”

“You’ve got a lifetime ahead of you all right, but whether you are going to do nothing or not depends largely on you.”

“It doesn’t depend on me at all.  It depends on God, and He said, ’Nothing doing.  Just get out and rust the rest of your life.  We don’t need you.’”