Checkers looked up, inquiringly. This was his first legitimate opportunity of taking a comprehensive look at her. The casual glance had proclaimed her plain, but now in the bright light of a hanging-lamp she seemed to him hopelessly unattractive. He felt chagrined and disappointed. He was angry with Arthur for not having prepared him for such a cruel disillusion. For somehow since his jesting words of the previous Sabbath morning, he had allowed his fancy to run the gamut of many glittering possibilities. He had started forth that evening, feeling a pleasurable excitement in the vague presentiment that he was going to meet his destiny. But now it simply "would n't do." He decided quickly and became resigned. "It was n't that she was really so ugly," he afterwards explained to me, "but there was n't anything about her that you could tie to, and sort of forget the rest"--except her "stuff," and he wasn't sure but that was one of Arthur's "pipe-dreams." She had no style, no face, no figure. Nothing at all for a little starter. She was just a girl, that was all--just a girl. A fact which put her beyond the pale. "Why do you say 'poor fellow?'" said Checkers, after several moments silence. "It seems to me he's mighty lucky to have such a tidy little friend." "Yes, but I fear she is only a friend, and that's why I 'm so sorry for him. I like Arthur; I think he is simply a dear. He has always been perfectly lovely to me. But Pert--well, Pert is very peculiar, and Arthur, you know, is awfully fast." Checkers put on an incredulous look. "Arthur fast!" he exclaimed with a laugh. "Why, if he was in a city, I 'd expect him to get run over by a hearse inside of a week." "Oh, you men always stand up for each other; but I know all about it. You can't fool me." Mrs. Barlow looked up from her sewing. "You and Arthur are very old friends, I suppose," she said, interrogatively. This was just the question that Checkers had feared. "We went to school at about the same time," he replied, and immediately struck up an air, which, for the time, precluded further questioning. "At least, I suppose we did," he thought to himself, "as we are about the same age." Meanwhile Pert and Arthur sat in the hammock outside in the radiant moonlight. It seemed to Arthur Pert had never looked so beautiful before. Her large, dark eyes were lustrous; and a silvery halo played about her soft, brown hair, while the pale light gave the clear skin of her oval face the pallor of marble, save for her lips, which were the redder by contrast. "Such a nice little fellow!" she had exclaimed, as Sadie and Checkers went into the house. "Who is he, Arthur? Where did he come from?"