"Of course I miss you all the time, and I assuredly missed you just here. If it is really true, as you write, that you are holding your summer gains and weigh twelve pounds more than you did at the end of June, and if you are thinking of getting a new suit, please bear in mind that my own won't last much longer. I have the chance, now, to go out a good deal and to meet influential, worth-while people. In the circumstances I ask you not to bant. One rather spare man in a pair of men is enough. "My hostess, a Mrs. Phillips, I met at a tea during my first week. This tea was given by a lady in the mathematical department, and she and her husband were at the dinner. They are people in the early or middle thirties, I judge, and were probably put in as a connecting link between the two sections of the party. Mrs. Phillips herself is a rich widow of forty-odd--forty-five or six, possibly,--though I am not the very best judge in such matters: no need to tell you that, on such a point, my eye and my general sense are none too acute. The only other middle-aged (or elderly) person present was a Mr. Randolph, who is perhaps fifty, or a little beyond, yet who appears to have his younger moments. There were some girls, and there were two young men in business in the city--neighbors and not connected with the University at all. 'For which relief,' etc.,--since it _is_ a bit benumbing to move in academic circles exclusively;--I should hate to feel that a really professorial manner was stealing over me. Well, everybody was lively and gay, except at first Ryder (he's the math. man); but even he limbered up finally. Mrs. Phillips herself has a great deal of action and vivacity--seemed hardly more than thirty. Well, I could be pretty gay too with a lot of money behind me; and I think that, for another year or so, I can contrive to be gay without it. But after that.... "I wish you had been there instead of Ryder. If you are really going to be twenty-seven in November--as I figure it--you might yourself have served as a connecting link between youth and age. No, no; I take it back; I didn't mean it. I wouldn't have you seem older for anything, and you know it. "There were three girls. They all live in the house itself, forming a little court: Mrs. P. seems to need young life and young attentions. So not one of them had to be taken home--there's usually _that_ to do, you know. Not that it would have mattered much, as the distances would have been short and the night was clear starlight. But they could all stay where they were, and I walked home in quite different company." Cope threw back his Oriental table-cover once more and drew out a few additional sheets of paper.