My pressure of ideas became so threatening that at last I burst out into the neighbourhood to relieve it. I found my safety valve in the most unexpected place--Andy Smith. The little Scotsman was amazingly read and belligerently eager for argument. It seemed that I was as much a surprise and Godsend to him as he to me. He would carry me continually beyond my depth, but it is in deep water that one learns to swim. And occasionally my irregular reading enabled me to punch him into a hole from which he came up spluttering. "Man, man!" he would exclaim, "I never thoct ye would ha' kened aboot that. I must be brushin' up. . . . Hall, ye're a lad o' pairts. Why do ye no take a hand in the makin' o' this new Province we're tae ha' oot here, all tae oorsel's? I'll be nominatin' ye yet, ye'll see." I laughed, but the plump of his suggestion left a pleasant ripple in my mind. After all, hadn't Jean and Spoof said something about that? Of course it was out of the question, but---- One day Jean came over to Fourteen, alone. I buried my Shakespeare under a pair of old overalls and opened the door. Perhaps she saw me glancing about, as though looking for Marjorie. "Unchaperoned, to-day," she said. "You don't mind?" She began to draw off her gloves; new knitted gloves which I had not seen before. "New gloves, Jean?" I queried. "Yes, just finished knitting them, from yarn mother sent. Feel them. Aren't they soft?" "I envy them very much," I said, and was much pleased with my subtlety. "Envy them--why? . . . Oh, you mean because they're--they're always holding my hands," and a happy wave of color flushed into her cheeks. "You are very clever." "Thanks, Jean. Now take off that pretty little cap of yours, which is not half as beautiful as the hair it hides, and let me draw off your overshoes--I have a grievance against them, as well--and we'll just sit down and settle the affairs of the universe." "I wish we could," she said, with a note that had lost most of its joyousness; "I rather wish we could. But where have you been hiding? And why? And did that afternoon we spent coasting bore you so that you have never asked me out since?" "Oh, I've been busy," I said. "Very busy." "Busy? At what?" Then I could forbear no longer. My secret was about to burst from me. I took Jean's coat and cap; I seated her; I drew off her overshoes; I stirred the fire. "Busy? Yes, I'm very busy. I have a big world to think about. In the words of the poet: "I love not man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal." "Lovely!" she exclaimed. "Why, Frank! . . . That's from--from----" "I have you guessing, Jean," I remarked, dryly. "You memorized that on purpose; you dug a pit for me," she protested. "Still, better that than none. Come, 'fess up. Where is it?"