“He said he would meet me at the steps--right near the mandolins and banjos. I haven’t seen any, have you?” The mandolins and banjos were, of course, on the steps of the Law School, as Cousin Marguerite very well knew. “I wish you had told me that sooner,” said Beverly, controlling himself. “Billy has probably tired of waiting and gone away.” “Oh, well--” she sighed. Ever since the two had left Beck, the Millstone had hovered shrewdly between apoplexy and intense enjoyment of everything she saw; she relied on the one to disarm criticism of the other. Billy wasn’t in front of the Law School; but his cousin thought it best to wait a few minutes longer for him, besides, the Mandolin Club was just about to play. She closed her eyes when the music began--the piece was a Spanish something or other through which a tambourine shivered at intervals--and clung to Beverly’s arm. “The Italians are so passionate,” she murmured at the end. “Billy isn’t coming,” said Beverly. “I’m afraid we’ve missed him,” she assented. “And the evening is almost over; you’ve seen everything,” Beverly went on. “It _is_ over,” he added joyously; a drop of rain had fallen on his hand. “Class Day is dead; the angels weep,” mused Cousin Marguerite, sentimentally. “‘I warmed both hands before the fire of life. It sinks--’” “And are you ‘ready to depart’?” asked Beverly, eagerly; Cousin Marguerite had shied at the really vital clause of the quotation. “‘Come, chaos--I have seen the best,’” was her answer. But Beverly didn’t consider that he had seen the best, until the bridge car that was to bear away Cousin Marguerite appeared in Harvard Square. He would have rushed off--the rain had begun in earnest--as soon as his companion of the afternoon and evening was seated, had she not extended her plump hand for a last, lingering pressure. “Good-bye,” she said, softly. “There are some things one cannot express; they are here,” she touched her chest lightly with the finger-tips of her left hand. “Good-bye. Oh,--I forgot to tell you,” she added abruptly, in another tone; “Billy and I discovered that we don’t spell our names the same way. We spell ours with an ‘e.’ We found it out just after he had refreshed me at Beck Hall and introduced those two sweet boys. So you see, Billy is more than a cousin; he is a friend.” The Millstone’s good-bye smile was an inscrutable performance, in which Beverly thought he detected pity, amusement, and a sort of devilish self-satisfaction. He turned, without a word, to find Billy. THE END THIS BOOK IS PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS DURING DECEMBER 1897 Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: He was probaby feeling=> He was probably feeling {pg 85} I was glad we’d bitched=> I was glad we’d ditched {pg 223} him away to somebody’s else room=> him away to somebody else’s room {pg 228}