He was agreeably talkative, with that wholesome, free, yet chivalrous manner which the girls, especially the thoughtful Dorothy, had noticed as particular attributes of the men they had met during their memorable trip to the West, some months before. She noticed, too, that his attentions to Tavia and herself were nicely balanced. Of course, Tavia, as she always did, began to run on in her light-hearted and irresponsible way; but though the young man listened to her with a quiet smile, he spoke directly to Dorothy quite as often as he did to the flyaway girl. He did not seek to take advantage of Tavia’s exuberant good spirits as so many strangers might have done. Tavia’s flirtatious ways were a sore trial to her more sober chum; but this young man seemed to understand Tavia at once. “Of course, you’re from the West?” Tavia finished one “rattlety-bang” series of remarks with this direct question. “Of course I am. Right from the desert—Desert City, in fact,” he said, with a quiet smile. “Oh!” gasped Tavia, turning her big eyes on her chum. “Did you hear that, Doro? Desert City!” For the girls, during their visit to the West had, as Tavia often claimed in true Western slang, helped “put Desert City on the map.” Dorothy, however, did not propose to let this conversation with a strange man become at all personal. She ignored her chum’s observation and, as the city-bound tube train came sliding in beside the platform, she reached for her own bag and insisted upon taking it from the Westerner’s hand. “Thank you so much,” she said, with just the right degree of firmness as well as of gratitude. Perforce he had to give up the bag, and Tavia’s, too, for there was the red-capped, smiling negro expectant of the “two-bits.” “You are _so_ kind,” breathed Tavia, with one of her wonderful “man-killing” glances at the considerate G. K., as Dorothy’s cousin, Nat White, would have termed her expression of countenance. G. K. was polite and not brusk; but he was not flirtatious. Dorothy entered the Hudson tube train with a feeling of considerable satisfaction. G. K. did not even enter the car by the same door as themselves nor did he take the empty seat opposite the girls, as he might have done. “There! he is one young man who will not flirt with you, Tavia,” she said, admonishingly. “Pooh! I didn’t half try,” declared her chum, lightly. “My dear! you would be tempted, I believe, to flirt with a blind man!” “Oh, Doro! Never!” Then she dimpled suddenly, glancing out of the window as the train swept on. “_There’s_ a man I didn’t try to flirt with.” “Where?” laughed Dorothy. “Outside there beside the tracks,” for they had not yet reached the Summit Avenue Station, and it is beyond that spot that the trains dive into the tunnel. “We passed him too quickly then,” said Dorothy. “Lucky man!” The next moment—or so it seemed—Tavia began on another tack: “To think! In fifteen minutes, Doro my dear, we shall be ‘Alone in a Great City.’”