"You mean that you--didn't like her?" probed the merciless little voice. "No--I--didn't--like her," said the man without a flicker of expression. Clutching the blue quilt about her the girl jumped to the floor and ran swiftly to him. "Oh, Father!" she cried. "Whatever in the world will I do if you don't like _me_?" "But I do like you!" smiled her father. Shy as a boy he reached out and touched her sunny hair. "Only one condition!" he rallied [38] with sudden and unaffected sternness. "When you broke into my study just now you called me 'Old-Dad'! Up to that moment I had considered myself--some--young--buck. Never again--as long as you live--I warn you--ever call me anything _except_ Old-Dad! Darned if it isn't sobering!" [39] II THE scene that Daphne had left behind her two thousand miles or more, though more academic of course, was none the less poignant to the one most concerned. Deflected by a more or less erudite lecture-obligation to a town at least gossip-distance away, no faintest rumor of any college chaos whatsoever had reached John Burnarde's ears till the evening after the dance, when just recrossing the well-worn threshold of his beautiful, austere study, the shrill harsh clang of his telephone bell rang down the curtain on what had been the most exquisitely perfect episode of even his fastidious life. Yet even then no whisper prepared him for what the alarm was all about. Poor John Burnarde! Whatever else an academic training may teach an undergraduate it has certainly never taught a member of the faculty what to do when summoned post-haste to the President's [40] office to consult with various other members of the faculty on what has been pronounced "a most flagrant breach of moral as well as of academic standards" he finds the case to be the exceedingly delicate one of a girl-student caught entertaining a man in her room late at night,--and the girl herself--his fiancee! That the betrothal at that moment was known only to himself and the girl gave John Burnarde the last long breath, he felt, that he should ever draw again. Still a bit flushed, a bit breezy, with his brisk sprint across the chill November campus, he was just slipping out of his overcoat in the doorway of the President's office when the name "Daphne Bretton" first struck across his startled senses. Half hampered by a balky overshoe, half pinioned by a ripped sleeve-lining he thrust his head alone into the conference. "What?" he demanded. "This will hit Burnarde rather roughly, I'm afraid," whispered the History Man to the Biology Woman. "She's quite his star English pupil, I imagine. Has done one [41] little bit of lyric verse already, they say, that is really rather remarkable. Very young of course, very ingenuous, but quite remarkably knowing." "Maybe now we can guess where she gets her 'knowingness,'" murmured the new Bible Instructor behind her pure white ringers.