She tripped ahead of him up the pathway and into the house, calling: "Aunty Landis! Uncle Landis! Here he is. Here's Mr. Bob White. He's ready for supper, I'm sure." The long-suffering good wife met him in the living-room. "Good-evening, Mr.--ah----" "My name is----" "Bob White," interrupted the girl. "Please let it be Bob White. That _must_ be your name. Don't you like it?" "Very much." "Then that's what we'll call him, please, Aunty Landis. Yesterday you were Puddin' Tame, to-day you're Bob White, and all the time you're really somebody else. I'll have the fun of meeting a new man any moment I like." Mrs. Landis received this remark with a look as nearly approaching to sternness as she was capable of. "Betty, you must behave. Remember, you ain't as much of a baby as the gentleman maybe takes you for." The girl fell silent, and seated herself upon a chintz-covered sofa. Fessenden scanned her more closely than the dusk outside had permitted him to do. Her hair was gathered in a shining braid that hung quite to her waist, a girlish and charming fashion. Her blue eyes watched him demurely from beneath a broad, low forehead. The sailor suit of yesterday had given place to a simple white frock--Fessenden noticed that it came fairly to her ankles, now discreetly slippered and stockinged. At the moment of seating themselves at table, they were joined by Uncle Landis, a middle-aged farmer whose preternaturally-shining face and plastered hair, not to mention a silence unbroken throughout the meal, gave plain proof of recent rigorous social instruction on the part of his help-meet. The memory of that supper has always been a delight to Fessenden. The omelet was all golden foam; the puffed potatoes a white-and-brown cloud. The spiced cantaloupe and brandied peaches reminded him of the wonderful concoctions his Grandmother Winthrop had made--she who would never allow any one but herself to wash the glass and silver. The hot Maryland beaten biscuits were crusty to the smoking hearts of them, withstanding his teeth's assault just long enough to make their crumbling to fragments the more delicious. The chocolate, in blue china cups not too small, was served as the Spaniards serve it and as it ought to be served--of the consistency of molasses candy when poured into the pan. And then came the creamy rice pudding for dessert, whereupon Fessenden won Mrs. Landis forever by asking for the receipt and gravely jotting it down in his notebook, in spite of Betty's laughing eyes. Betty's talk flashed and sparkled to his sallies. She showed a self-possession remarkable in a farmer's daughter who was encountering a man of the world for what must have been the first time in her life, as he fancied. Once or twice he felt that she had led him on to talk of himself and to expand his own ideas to a degree unusual in him.