"He wants her frightfully but he isn't a poor thing in the very least. He is an almost uncannily clever and subtle young person for his years, with a very large income and a fanatically devoted mother behind him, and he's had everything he ever wanted all his life except physical perfection,--and my good Top Step." "Ah, yes, but what can he do, after all?" Honor's stepfather shrugged. "He knows that she would not be allowed to marry the lad if he went the way of the other 'Wild Kings,'--that she is too sound and sane to insist on it. And I think--I thought even in their High School days--that he deliberately steers Jimsy into danger." "My word!" said the novelist, hotly. "What are you going to do about it, Stephen?" "Watch. Wait. Stand ready. I shall make it my business to drop in at the fraternity house once or twice next season, when I go north to San Francisco,--and into other fraternity houses, and put my ear to the ground. And if I find what I fear to find I'll take it up with both the lads, face to face, and then I'll send for Honor." "Right!" said Miss Bruce-Drummond, her fine, fresh-colored face glowing. "And I'll run down to Florence at the Christmas holidays and take her to Rome with me, shall I?" "It will be corking of you, Ethel." "I shall love doing it." He looked at her appreciatively. She would love doing it; she loved life and people, Ethel Bruce-Drummond, and she was able therefore to put life and people, warm and living, on to her pages. She was as fit and hardy as a splendid boy, her cheeks round and ruddy, her eyes bright, her fine bare hands brown and strong, her sturdy ankles sturdier than ever in her heavy knitted woolen hose and her stout Scotch brogues. He had known and counted on her for almost twenty years--and he had married Mildred Carmody. "Ethel," he said, suddenly, "in that book of mine I mean to have----" "Ah, yes, that book of yours, Stephen! Slothful creature! You know quite well you'll never do it." "Never do it! Why,"--he was indignant--"I've got tons of it done already, in my head! It only wants writing down." "Yes, yes," said his friend, penitently, "I make no doubt. It only wants writing down. Well?" "I'm going to have a chapter on friendship, and insert a really novel idea. Friendship has never been properly praised,--begging pardon in passing of Mr. Emerson and his ilk. I'm going to suggest that it be given dignity and weight by having licenses and ceremonies, just as marriage has. It has a better right, you know, really. It's a much saner and more probable vow--to remain friends all one's life, than in love. In genuine friendship there is indeed no variableness, neither shadow or turning. You and I, now, might quite safely have taken out our friendship license and plighted our troth,--twenty years, isn't it?"