“There is not, indeed,” assented the elder man, rising. “And it has further surprised me, because you have always seemed rather indifferent to women, Dana--almost too much so. Well--I am glad you told me. Your life has been clean, indeed, if you have no worse things to tell of than a two weeks’ flirtation with a little Western girl!” He laughed again--a deep, hearty laugh, with a relieved ring in it. “Good-night!” he said. “To-morrow you will please get to the office promptly as a junior member should! ‘Cahill, Crosby, and Cahill’ sounds very imposing, doesn’t it, Dana? much more so than merely ‘Cahill and Crosby.’ I’m delighted, my boy! And it is especially good to think that you are back with me. What with your college life and travels, and law study, I have hardly seen anything of you for ten years, and at my age one cannot spare ten years--it is too big a slice out of the little cake left! Good-night!” “Good-night, sir!” responded the young man, heartily, as he held the door open for his father to pass into the library. And then he reseated himself before the fire and smoked another cigar and recalled a great many details that had somehow slipped his memory when talking to his father, and he felt distinctly relieved and glad to get away from his own thoughts when he remembered an engagement which took him out immediately. * * * * * At Easter Miss Louise Cahill left college to spend the vacation at her home in Boston. It was possibly because she was small and blond and quite irrepressible that her most intimate friend, Edith Minot, of Baltimore, whom she brought home with her, was tall and rather stately, with a dark, severe beauty quite in contrast to that of Miss Cahill. They were alike, however, in a great many ways, in their young enthusiasms and in their devotion to art--they worshipped Israels and Blommers and Herzog--and in their vast interest in electrical inventions and discoveries, and in their sympathy with whatever was weak or ill or oppressed, and in modern charities and college settlements. They had been great friends at college, where Miss Minot had taken her degree the year before, but they had seen little of each other since, Miss Cahill having returned to finish her college course and Miss Minot having been abroad until late in the fall, and having then been much taken up with the social life of Baltimore.