Miss Barbara Howe, whose home was in Brookline and whose father was the senior partner of an old and well-known firm of downtown merchants, was the leading questioner.  She liked Mary and the latter liked her.  Barbara was pretty and full of spirits and, although she was the only child, and a rather spoiled one, in a wealthy family, there was no snobbishness in her make-up.

“But I can’t see,” she declared, “what you have been doing all the time.  Where have you been keeping yourself?  Don’t you know anybody?”

Mary smiled.  “Oh, yes,” she replied, “I know a good many people.”

“You know what I mean.  Don’t you know any of the fellows at Harvard, or Tech, or Yale, or anywhere?  I know dozens.  And you must know some.  You know Sam Keith; you said you did.”

Mary admitted that she knew Sam slightly.

“Isn’t he fun!  Sam and I are great chums.  Doesn’t he dance divinely!”

“I don’t know.  I never saw him dance.”

“Then you’ve missed something.  Do you know his friend, the one on the football team—­Crawford Smith, his name is—­do you know him?”

Mary nodded.  “I—­I’ve met him,” she said.

“You have?  Don’t you think he is perfectly splendid?”

“I don’t know.  Is he?”

“Of course he is.  Haven’t you read about him in the papers?  He made that long run for a touchdown in the Yale game.  Oh, you should have seen it!  I couldn’t speak for two days after that game.  He was just as cool and calm.  All the Yale men were trying to get him and he dodged—­I never saw anyone so cool and who kept his head so well.”

“I thought the papers spoke most of the way he kept his feet.”

“Then you did read about it!  Of course you did!  I’m just dying to know him.  All the girls are crazy about him.  Where did you meet him?  Tell me!”

Mary smiled.  On the occasion of her only meeting with Crawford Smith that young fellow had been anything but cool.

“I met him in my uncle’s store at South Harniss,” she said.  “It was three years ago.”

“And you haven’t seen him since?  He is a great friend of Sam’s.  And Sam’s people have a summer home at the Cape.  Perhaps you’ll meet him there again.”

“Perhaps.”

“Goodness!  One would think you didn’t want to.”

“Why, I don’t know that I do, particularly.  Why should I?”

“Why should you!  Mary Lathrop, I do think you are the queerest girl.  You don’t talk like a girl at all.  Sometimes I think you are as old as—­as Prissy.”  “Prissy” was the disrespectful nickname by which the young ladies referred, behind her back, to Miss Priscilla Cabot.

Mary laughed.  “Not quite, I hope,” she said.  “But I don’t see why I should be so very anxious to meet Crawford Smith.  And I’m sure he isn’t anxious to meet me.  If all the other girls are crazy about him, that ought to be enough, I should think.”