His thoughts proved increasingly stimulating to the home-come Charles. And when he came to Olive Street, he suddenly bethought him to turn up that way; not expecting to stop at the Wings', of course (for he had an engagement to call there this evening, much as if he hadn't been a modern at all), but merely thinking that if he should happen to meet Mary it would be quite a pleasant thing.... Having turned, the buoyant young man presently sent, as it were, a scouting eye on ahead. And it fell, not upon the friend he had made famous in a night, but upon an Object approaching. The object was a conveyance, a little vehicle of the self-propelling type. It was an automobile, clearly; a runabout, you would have to term it, though certainly of a pattern adopted in no recent year. So steep and bobbed was this runabout's little body, so quaintly archaic its contour, that it stirred in the beholder dim recollections of the early days of the horseless age, of strange pictures seen in scientific magazines back in the nineties. Very slowly the little vehicle approached, but very loudly, too, with an increasing bias toward the sidewalk, with queer rumblings and groanings, with the oddest snorts. Charles's puzzled eye lifted. And so it was that it encountered again the soft gaze that he had last seen misted in tears, upon a sofa. And so he heard the pretty voice, that had once referred to him as a brute, saying:-- "How do you do, Mr. Garrott!... I--I'm very glad to see you back!" "Why--Miss _Flower_!" Sheer surprise had halted him in his tracks, and the self-propelling runabout, which had been almost stationary all along, became entirely so, right at the curb. "When did you get home?" Miss Flower was finishing, laughing, a becoming color in her cheeks. "I'm just in--this minute! How are you? I--ah--didn't realize at all that it was you." He had taken the small hand she offered, momentarily flustered, despite all effort, by the utterly sudden re-meeting. He was aware that the girl looked a little conscious, too. But something in her gaze seemed to be trying to tell him that bygones were bygones now; and she went on with reassuring naturalness:-- "I hope you had a nice holiday? I've wanted very much to see you, and thank you myself. About Wallie, I mean--your offering to teach him--" "Oh!--Why, _that_!" "It was really the nicest thing. I--haven't seen you since, but you don't know how much I--we all appreciated--" With recovered poise the young man easily brushed aside these thanks. "But I'm awfully glad," he added, "that he didn't wait for me, after all." "Oh!" she exclaimed. "You _heard_, then?" He mentioned his letter from Mary Wing, causing her to say, "Oh," again.--"Wasn't it _wonderful_! I knew you'd be interested...."