"'When she comes home again! A thousand ways I fashion to myself the tenderness Of my glad welcome: I shall tremble--yes--'" "Stop trembling, Colonel, and try one of our new office chairs, warranted to hold anybody but Brother Ike Pettit without fading away." The Colonel bent over Miss Farrell's hand reverently and sat down. "I've been trying to earn an honest living practicing law down at home and this is the first chance I've had to come up and see what the late lamented legislature left of the proud old Hoosier State. Is Dan locked up inside there with some lucrative client?" "I regret to say that I don't believe there's a cent in his present caller." "Hark!" At this moment a roar was heard from the inner room on which "private" was printed in discreet letters. The Colonel was at once alert. "'Ask me no more; the moon may draw the sea' But Isaac Pettit's jokes shall shake the land,-- with apologies to the late Laureate. So the boys are finding their way up here, are they? I'll wait an hour or two till that compendium of American humor has talked Dan to sleep. So you and Dan left your Uncle Morton all alone in gloomy splendor in the Boordman Building!" "Mr. Harwood made me an offer and I accepted it," replied Rose. "This is a free country and a P.W.G. can work where she pleases, can't she?" "P.W.G.?" "Certainly, a poor working-girl"--Rose clasped her hands and bowed her head--"if the initials fail to illuminate." The Colonel inspected the room, and his eyes searched Miss Farrell's desk. "Let me see, I seem to miss something. It must be the literary offerings that used to cluster about the scene of your labors. Your selections in old times used to delight me. No one else of my acquaintance has quite your feeling for romance. I always liked that one about the square-jawed American engineer who won the Crown Princess of Piffle from her father in a poker game, but decided at the last minute to bestow her upon his old college friend, the Russian heir-apparent, just to preserve the peace of Europe. I remember I found you crying over the great renunciation one day." "Oh, I've passed that all up, Colonel. I'm strong for the pale high-brow business now. I'm doing time in all the night classes at Elizabeth House where I board, and you'll hardly know your little Rose pretty soon." "Fitting yourself for one of the learned professions?" "Scarcely. Just fitting myself to be decent," replied Rose in a tone that shifted the key of the conversation--a change which the Colonel respected. "That's right, Rose. This is a good place for you, and so is Mrs. Owen's boarding-house. By the way, who's this school-teacher Aunt Sally has taken up--saw her at the party-great chum of the old lady's." "You must mean Miss Sylvia." "Sylvia?"