"Dear me!" he said, "I must be back in the classroom in half an hour. Supposing we continue this conversation to-morrow, in your own home, Miss Dudley? May I call to-morrow night?" "Why yes," replied Lydia, in utter embarrassment again, "if you really want to! It's a dreadful trip,--to the end of the car line and half a mile along the road to a white cottage after that." "That's nothing," said the Harvard man, gravely. "Till to-morrow night then," and lifting his cap, he skated back, leaving Lydia in a state of mind difficult to define. She told Lizzie and her father that evening. Amos looked over his paper with a slight scowl. "You're too young to have a college professor calling." "Well," cried Lydia, "you don't seem to realize how wonderful it is that he wants to take this awful trip out here, just to see _me_. And don't let it worry you, Daddy! He'll never want to come but once." She looked around the living-room disgustedly. Amos started to speak, looked at Lizzie, who shook her head, and subsided. The older Lydia grew, the more helpless he felt in guiding her. It seemed to him though that Patience would be pleased to have a professor calling on her daughter, and he let the matter go at that. The next day was Saturday, and Lydia started an attack on the living-room immediately after breakfast. She re-oiled the floors. She took down the curtains, washed and ironed them and put them up again. She blacked the base burner and gave the howling Adam a bath. The old mahogany worried her, even after she had polished it and re-arranged it until the worst of the scratches were obscured. Her father's old wooden armchair, a solid mahogany that had belonged to his great-grandfather, she decided to varnish. She gave it two heavy coats and set it close to the kitchen stove to dry. By this time she was tired out. She lay in the dusk on the old couch watching the red eyes of the base burner, when Billy came in. "Just stopped on my way home to see if you'd go skating to-night," he said. "Tired out? What've you been doing?" Lydia enumerated the day's activities ending with, "Professor Willis is coming to call this evening." Billy gave a low whistle. "Of course, I knew they'd begin to take notice sooner or later. But I don't see why you wanted to wear yourself out for a sissy like him." "He's not a sissy. He's a gentleman," said Lydia, calmly. She was still curled up on the couch and Billy could just distinguish her bright hair in the red glow from the stove. Billy was silent for a moment, then he said, "It's a shame you have to work so hard. I think of you so often when I see other girls in their pretty clothes, gadding about! Doggone it! and you're worth any ten of them. If I had my way--" He paused and for a moment only the familiar booming of the ice disturbed the silence.