Don't think that she hadn't young men to walk home with her from school. She had. But they were likely to be young men whose collars were not guiltless of eraser marks; who were active in the debating societies; and whose wrists hung, a red oblong, below their too-short sleeves. The kind of young man destined for utter failure or great success. The kind of young man who tries a pecan grove in Carolina, or becomes president of a bank in New York. None of these young men ever kissed Lottie. I think that sometimes, looking at her serious pretty lips closed so firmly over the white teeth, they wanted to. I'm sure that Lottie, though she did not know it, wished they would. But they never did. Lottie absolutely lacked coquetry as does the woman who tardily develops a sense of sex power. In Lottie's junior year these gawky and studious young men narrowed down to one. His name was Rutherford Hayes Adler and he was a Jew. There is no describing him without the use of the word genius, and in view of his novels of to-day (R. H. Adler) there is no need to apologise for the early use of the word. He was a living refutation of the belief that a brilliant mathematician has no imagination. His Armour report cards would have done credit to young Euclid; and he wrote humorous light verse to Lottie and sold insurance on the side. Being swarthy, black-haired, and black-eyed he was cursed with a taste for tan suits and red neckties. These, with the high choker collar of the period, gave him the look of an end-man strayed from the minstrel troupe. Being naturally shy, he assumed a swagger. He was lovable and rather helpless, and his shoe strings were always coming untied. His humour sense was so keen, so unerring, so fastidious as to be almost a vice. Armour students who did not understand it said, "He's a funny fellow. I don't know--kind of batty, isn't he?" This young man it was who walked home with Lottie Payson all through her junior and senior years; sat next to her at meetings of the debating society; escorted her to school festivities; went bicycling with her on Saturday afternoons. The Payson household paid little attention to him or to Lottie. Belle was busy with her love affair. Henry Kemp had just appeared on her horizon. Mrs. Payson was deep in her real estate transactions. On the few occasions when Rutherford Hayes actually entered the house and sat down to await Lottie the two were usually on their way to some innocuous entertainment or outing. So that it was Aunt Charlotte, if anybody, who said "How do you do, young man. Oh yes, you're Mr. Adler. Lottie'll be right down." A little silence. Then kindly, from Aunt Charlotte, "H'm! How do you like your school work?" Years afterwards Adler put Aunt Charlotte into one of his books. And Lottie. And Mrs. Carrie Payson, too. He had reason to remember Mrs. Carrie Payson.