“To tell you the truth,” said Bob, “I’d promised to visit a fellow named Broke in my class, who lives in New York.  And I couldn’t get out of it.  His sister, by the way, is in Miss Sadler’s.  I suppose you know her.  But if I’d thought you’d see me, I should have gone to Brampton, anyway.  You were so down on me in Washington.”

“It was very good of you to take the trouble to come to see me here.  There must be a great many girls in Boston you have to visit.”

He caught the little note of coolness in her voice.  Cynthia was asking herself whether, if Mr. Browne had not seen fit to give a good report of her, he would have come at all.  He would have come, certainly.  It is to be hoped that Bob Worthington’s attitude up to this time toward Cynthia has been sufficiently defined by his conversation and actions.  There had been nothing serious about it.  But there can be no question that Mr. Browne’s openly expressed admiration had enhanced her value in his eyes.

“There’s no girl in Boston that I care a rap for,” he said.

“I’m relieved to hear it,” said Cynthia, with feeling.

“Are you really?”

“Didn’t you expect me to be, when you said it?”

He laughed uncomfortably.

“You’ve learned more than one thing since you’ve been in the city,” he remarked, “I suppose there are a good many fellows who come here all the time.”

“Yes, there are,” she said demurely.

“Well,” he remarked, “you’ve changed a lot in three months.  I always thought that, if you had a chance, there’d be no telling where you’d end up.”

“That doesn’t sound very complimentary,” said Cynthia.  She had, indeed, changed.  “In what terrible place do you think I’ll end up?”

“I suppose you’ll marry one of these Boston men.”

“Oh,” she laughed, “that wouldn’t be so terrible, would it?”

“I believe you’re engaged to one of ’em now,” he remarked, looking very hard at her.

“If you believed that, I don’t think you would say it,” she answered.

“I can’t make you out.  You used to be so frank with me, and now you’re not at all so.  Are you going to Coniston for the holidays?”

Her face fell at the question.

“Oh, Bob,” she cried, surprising him utterly by a glimpse of the real Cynthia, “I wish I were—­I wish I were!  But I don’t dare to.”

“Don’t dare to?”

“If I went, I should’ never come back—­never.  I should stay with Uncle Jethro.  He’s so lonesome up there, and I’m so lonesome down here, without him.  And I promised him faithfully I’d stay a whole winter at school in Boston.”

“Cynthia,” said Bob, in a strange voice as he leaned toward her, “do you—­do you care for him as much as all that?”

“Care for him?” she repeated.

“Care for—­for Uncle Jethro?”