"You've never heard anything particularly terrible about me, have you?" he demanded, rather anxiously, once in course of a duet of personalities. "Only that a great many women are in love with you." "It's funny I've never heard that," he said dolefully. "Men say that you are an exceptionally decent chap and it's too bad you'll never amount to anything." "Oh, they do, do they?" indignantly. "I think they'll be stunned when they hear of your latest move." "Well, I'll show 'em what I'm made of." "Splendid! I like to hear you speak in that way." "You do?" he asked eagerly. "You _do_ think I'll make good, don't you?" "What station is this?" she asked deliberately. "Rahway," he said, leaning close to her in order to see the name on the station. "I think I'll have a holiday on Christmas," he ventured carefully. "That's next week, you know. May I come down to Princeton for the afternoon and evening?" "To see me?" She seemed surprised. "Yes," he said simply. She had expected some frivolous reply. Her gaze wavered ever so slightly as it met his. "It will be a very dull way to spend Christmas," she said. "Christmas is always a dull day," he said, so imploringly that she laughed. He came very near to adding, irrelevantly, that she was prettier than ever when she smiled. "When there are no children about," he succeeded in saying, as an amend for his slip. "There are two in our house, besides myself," she said gayly. "Splendid!" he cried enthusiastically. "Can't we have a tree?" On the platform at Princeton he was introduced to two small and very pretty young ladies, six and eight, and to a resentful gallant aged nine, who seemed to look upon him with disfavor. It afterwards developed that he was the characteristic neighbor boy who loves beyond his years. He adored Miss Pembroke. "Mr. Van Pycke is coming down for Christmas," announced Miss Pembroke, in course of time, drawing her little sisters close to her side and smiling upon the dazzled gallant, aged nine. "Will you play bear for me?" asked the young lady aged six, after a sly look at her nurse. "The whole menagerie," said Mr. Van Pycke, most obligingly. Then, having occupied a perilously long time in shaking hands with the girl in the Persian lamb, he rushed off in response to the station master's satirical warning that last night's train was just pulling out for New York. "I know just what's going to happen to me," he said to himself, jubilantly, as he waved to her from the window. "I can feel it coming." CHAPTER V HIS FIRST HOLIDAY Two days passed before Mr. Van Pycke, senior, in diligent and somewhat wrathful quest of his son, came to know that the young man had accepted a position as secretary to Mr. Krosson.