"I know that your cares are many, but get to work on the score of the opera. I find that by working at night for a week I shall be able to finish the last act and make all the changes you suggested. We must launch the thing now. I have overcome all scruples, as you called them, and I want nothing more than to get the opera into some manager's hands. If you think that Blum & Starks will take it up, you had better see them at once. My name may be used and everything that goes with it in the way of previous unimportant literary efforts. It's unusual, of course, for a Professor of English Literature to write a comic opera, but the very unusualness may give it some publicity and help the thing along. I have made one change without conferring; given the tenor-lover the baritone-villain's song: 'Eyes like the skies in summer.' Write something very pretty for that, will you, old man? The money we may make on this will help some in the present critical family situation. I understand that there have been a good many failures in light opera this winter, and the managers are looking for good things. It may be that we shall strike at the psychological moment. "Yours, E. G." The august Professor then wrote two other letters; one to a firm of bankers and one to his publishers. At last, getting into an old dressing gown and some very rusty slippers, lighting a long, black cigar and drawing his student's lamp nearer, he took an immense roll of manuscript from a drawer and fell to work. It was three o'clock before he turned in for three hours of troubled sleep. CHAPTER VIII. A JAPANESE SPREAD. One morning every girl at Queen's discovered by her plate at the breakfast table a strange rice paper document some twelve inches in length and very narrow as to width, rolled compactly on a small stick. "What's this?" demanded Margaret Wakefield, unrolling her scroll and regarding it with the legal eye of an attorney perusing documentary evidence. Across the top of the scroll swung a gay little row of Japanese lanterns done in delicate water colors, and in characters strangely Japanese was inscribed the following invitation: "Greetings from Otoyo Sen: Your honorable presence is requested on Saturday evening at the insignificant fête in the unworthily apartment of Otoyo Sen. Otoyo muchly flattered by joyful acceptance." Fortunately, the little Japanese girl, overcome by shyness after this rash venture, had not appeared at breakfast and was spared the mirthful expressions on the faces of the girls around the table. "Well, of all the funny children," laughed Molly. "Nance, let's offer her our room. She can't get the crowd into her little place." "Of course," said Nance, agreeable to anything her roommate might suggest.