“You must do this again, but not too often,” was Tregarvon’s half-jesting warning to his entertainer at the moment of leave-taking; a moment snatched while Carfax was giving the privileged seniors a spin around the campus drive in the yellow car. “Why not often?--or as often as you care to come?” the musician asked indifferently. “Because I am much too impressionable. You could very easily make me forget some things that it is up to me to remember.” “For example?” she prompted. “It’s a long story, and Poictiers won’t give me time to tell it now. But some other evening, if I may come?” “Why shouldn’t you come when you feel like it? I hope you won’t go away underestimating your welcome--you and Mr. Carfax. You owe it to us to come frequently, so that the novelty will wear off--for the student body. I’ll venture to assert that Miss Longstreet has been having the time of her life keeping order in the dormitories this evening. Good night; and give my love to Uncle William.” “To Uncle William? Then you know him?” She laughed and showed him that Carfax was waiting for him. “Uncle William will know who sent the message if you say ‘Miss Dick’,” she explained; and he was obliged to accept this as an answer to his eager question. The road down the mountain was a speeding track only in spots, and between stretches the big car crept at a snail’s pace on the brakes, and so permitted conversation. Carfax began it in genial raillery, congratulating Tregarvon upon the accessibility of Highmount and the very evident heartiness of his welcome. “You can’t desiccate entirely down here, Vance, with such a well-spring of youth and beauty as that within shouting distance,” he remarked. But Tregarvon was thinking pointedly of Miss Richardia when he rejoined: “She is a puzzle to me, Poictiers; nothing less.” “The charming music teacher, you mean? Peaches-and-cream, I’d call her, if she’d let me.” “You’re blind; blind as a mole!” retorted Tregarvon. “Why, man! she is anything but that--or those.” “Doubtless,” Carfax laughed. “They are all ‘anything but that’ when you get down under the pose. But ‘peaches-and-cream’ is Miss Birrell’s pose, just the same; not the conventional kind they serve you at the Waldorf or Ritz-Carlton, of course, but the sort you get when the cream comes thick and rich from your own dairy, and the peaches are picked, sun-warm, in your own orchard. You may tell her that, if you like, and palm it off as original with you. Strikes me it’s rather neat.” “Oh, you go hang!” said Tregarvon. “I don’t have to work in your compliments, second-hand. I can turn ’em myself, at a pinch.” At this point a half-mile of good road beckoned for speed, and the talk was interrupted. When it was resumed at the next curving hazard in the pike, Carfax had somewhat to say about the Ocoee. “What do you know about the ancient history of your mine, Vance?” he asked, when the topic was fairly launched. “Nothing much, in detail. Why?”