He was close at their heels before they heard his hail and turned. A momentary expression of annoyance, gone almost as soon as it came, passed over Barclay’s face. June looked confused and, for the first instant, the Colonel saw, did not know what to say. “Well,” he said, trying to speak with genial unconsciousness, “what are you doing up here so far from your native haunts?” “I met Miss Allen on the avenue just below there,” said Jerry quickly, “walking up this way to make a call on some friends of hers.” He spoke with glib ease, but his eye, which lighted for an instant on June’s, was imperious with a command. June was taken aback by his smooth readiness. She did not like what he said, but she obeyed the commanding eye and answered with stammering reluctance: “Yes, the Nesbits. I was going there this afternoon. They’re just a block beyond here.” It was not exactly a lie, June thought, for had Barclay not appeared she would doubtless have gone to the Nesbits, wondering all the time what had happened to him. But Barclay had appeared, as he always did now at the time and place he so carelessly yet so scrupulously designated, and June would not have seen the Nesbits that afternoon. “Suppose you take a little _pasear_ with me instead of going to the Nesbits,” said the Colonel. “I’m not conceited, but I think I’m just as interesting as they are.” “And what are _you_ doing up here?” she said, her presence of mind, and with it her natural gaiety of manner, returning. “You’re as far from your native haunts as I am.” “I was calling, too,” he answered, “on the Barkers. But _I_ didn’t meet any one sufficiently interesting to keep me from fulfilling my duties, and I have seen the new house from the skylight to the coal-bin.” “Never mind,” she said consolingly, “you’ve met me. That’s your reward for good conduct.” They had arrived at the upper corner of the plaza where only the breadth of a street divided them from the green, tree-dotted sward, cut with walks and set forth in benches. Barclay, raising his hat and murmuring some conventional words of farewell, turned and left them, and the Colonel and his companion strolled across the road and over the grass toward a bench, behind which a clump of laurels grew shelteringly, a screen against the wind and fog. “This is the most comfortable of all the benches,” said June artlessly as they sat down. “The laurels keep the wind off like a wall. Even on cold days, when the fog comes in, it’s a warm little corner.” “You’ve been here before,” said the Colonel, looking at her out of the sides of his eyes. A telltale color came into her cheeks, but the city and its ways were training her, and she managed to exclude confusion and consciousness from her face. “Oh, yes,” she answered, “several times. I sometimes rest here after I’ve been taking a long walk.” “That must be dull,” said her companion. “I can’t see anything cheerful in sitting on a park bench by yourself.”