The young man flushed up and turned over some papers on his desk. They were in his office where Miss Ri had stopped to consult him. "I'm all right," he replied in reply. "Working a little hard, maybe. I must, you know, if I want to get ahead." "And that is why you don't drop in so often," returned Miss Ri. Then after waiting a moment for the answer which did not come, she went on. "Well, you know you are always welcome, Berk. I may bamboozle you, but you know it is all talk. Come when you can and thank you very much for straightening out this route. I did not want to go around the other way and be all day getting there, spending half the time waiting at stations to make connections." "I find the most direct way is generally the best," he told her. "When you want to go across country you'd better drive instead of depending upon trains. Good luck to you, Miss Ri." And he turned to his desk as she went out. Saturday furnished all that anyone could ask in the way of weather. It was almost too warm for the season, and a few clouds piled up in the west, but it could not be a finer day, as everyone declared with satisfaction, and the two travellers sat down to their morning meal in happy anticipation of what was before them. "We're going to have a lovely time, Verlinda," remarked Miss Ri. "The judge will have some good tales for us, I know. I am sure he will be interested to know you are a great-niece of the Verlinda Talbot he used to know, and, if report speaks the truth, with whom he was much in love, but like the gallant gentleman he was, when she married someone else he made no sign though he was hard hit, and he was always a devoted friend to her and to your grandfather. His son Dick isn't unlike him. He has a nice wife and half a dozen children, some of whom are grown up by now." She was silent for a little while and then she said, with half a laugh and half a sigh, "I didn't expect to be visiting Dick Goldsborough's house in my old age." Linda looked up from the coffee she was sipping. "That sounds very much as if there were a story, a romance hidden in your remark." Miss Ri gave a little comfortable laugh. "Well, there was something like it once." "Oh, Aunt Ri, and you never told me. Were you--were you engaged to Mr. Dick Goldsborough?" "No-o. You see there were two of us, Julia Emory and I, and it seemed hard for him to make up his mind which he liked best--but finally--he did." "Oh, dear Aunt Ri! And he married the other girl? Did it--were you--" "Oh, yes, I was dreadfully cut up for a time, I can frankly say. The first year I thought I'd die and wanted to; the second I was not averse to living, though in a sort of twilight world; the third I was quite glad to live; the fourth I wondered how I could ever have been such a sentimental goose, and the fifth I thanked the Lord that I had escaped." "Oh, Aunt Ri, Aunt Ri, you are dreadful."