It cannot be said that he flushed then, but a little flood of dark color came into his pallid face. He rowed for the boat-house. He maneuvered the boat alongside the landing. Twilight had come on. The shed-like place was too dim for safety, lighted at the far end with one cobwebby lantern. He hallooed to the absent boatman, shipped his oars, and stepped out none too expertly. Charlotte stood up, smiling. She was glad to be in. Sitting opposite him thus, in the boat, it had been impossible to evade his red-rimmed eyes. Still smiling a little, with relief she took his proffered hand as he stood on the landing, stepped up, stumbled a little because he had pulled with unexpected (and unnecessary) strength, and was horrified suddenly to see him thrust his head forward like a particularly nasty species of bird, and press moist clammy lips to the hollow of her throat. Her reaction was as unfortunate as it was unstudied. "Uriah Heep!" she cried (at last! the resemblance that had been haunting her all these days), "Heep! Heep!" and pushed him violently from her. The sacred memories of the past twelve years, violated now, were behind that outraged push. It sent him reeling over the edge of the platform, clutching at a post that was not there, and into the shallow water on the other side. The boatmen, running tardily toward them, fished him out and restored him to a curiously unagitated young lady. He was wet but uninjured. Thus dripping he still insisted on accompanying her home. She had not murmured so much as, "I'm sorry." They walked home in hurried silence, his boots squashing at every step. The Thrifts--father, mother, and daughter--still were seated on the platform before the house, probably discussing real estate values--two of them, at least. Followed exclamations, explanations, sympathy, flurry. "I fell in. A bad landing place. No light. A wretched hole." Charlotte turned abruptly and walked up the front steps and into the house. "She's upset," said Mrs. Thrift, automatically voicing the proper thing, flustered though she was. "Usually it's Charlotte that falls into things. You must get that coat off at once. And the.... Isaac, your pepper-and-salt suit. A little large but.... Come in.... Dear, dear!... I'll have a hot toddy ready.... Carrie...." * * * * * It was soon after the second Chicago fire that Isaac Thrift and his son-in-law built the three-story-and-basement house on Prairie avenue, near 29th Street. The old man recalled the boast made almost forty years before, that some day he would build as far south as Thirtieth Street; though it was not, as he had then predicted, a country home.