“Oh, but I am--you know I am,” she continued archly. Beverly would have walked on, had not the strange woman suddenly leaned forward,--still looking up at him,--with the air of one about to impart a confidence. The action would have made retreat at that moment rather rude, or at least abrupt, so the senior hesitated deferentially, and returned her look by one of inquiry. She was a stout, middle-aged woman with short, curly, dark hair. Her upturned face was round, red, unlined, and perspiring. She wore a black-satin skirt, under which Beverly could see her low shoes of yellow leather resting firmly, with their toes well turned out, on the step below. Where black skirt and white linen shirt-waist met, a crimson belt circumscribed her buxomness as with a band of flame. Under one of her chins perched a crimson cravat of another shade; and a crimson ribbon repeated the note in a tiny sailor hat that was almost upside down with coquetry. On her lap lay a red fan of the circular kind that appears and disappears at the pull of a silken cord. Beverly considered her absurd. “I just know you’re a Harvard man,” she said engagingly. “Now aren’t you?” “Yes, I am,” admitted Beverly. “Oh, I’m so glad!” she clapped her hands with all the glee of a little girl of fifty. “You can help me--you can explain everything; the newspapers take so much for granted.” Beverly looked a trifle wild. “Now here’s a Yard ticket,” she fumbled a moment among black-satin intricacies, “and here’s a Tree ticket, and here’s one for Memorial Hall. I have an invitation for Beck Hall, too,” she added, drawing out some envelopes. “Oh, and this is my ticket to Poughkeepsie!” She unfolded a long strip of green pasteboard. “I’m going to be at that race; oh, I’m going to be there! You see--I’m a regular Harvard girl.” “And what can I do for you?” asked Beverly, politely. “I hate to trouble you,” she said, almost diffidently; “but I’m so afraid of missing something. If you would explain the tickets to me--tell me of the gates to which they are the key; if you would be so good--and I know you will be. _Ah--je connais mes âmes._” Her eyelids fluttered up, then down. She pressed the tickets into Beverly’s hand. The senior, somewhat astonished, explained their respective uses as rapidly as possible. “And now the invitation to Beck Hall; you’ve forgotten that,” she said, with a little side glance of reproach. “Why, it’s just an invitation to a spread,--a sort of garden party. You go there any time after the Tree exercises,” explained Beverly. “Ah--but that’s not all,” said the lady. “If she only wouldn’t look at me that way,” thought Beverly. “I have a cousin,” she went on, “the dearest boy in all the world. Look--this is he.” Beverly, with a slight feeling of apprehension, followed her stubby finger down the first column of names engraved on the invitation, until it stopped at “William Paxton Fields.” “Do you know him?” she asked. Beverly wavered a moment; he felt what was coming.