“You needn’t be afraid of being left alone with anybody,” she said. “Here’s Jerry Barclay.” June drew back, her eyebrows raised into exclamatory semi-circles, an irrepressible smile on her lips. “Rosamund,” called Allen from the table, “where’s the ash receiver? Gracey’s got nothing to put his ashes in but the blue satin candy box one of June’s young men gave her for Christmas.” The entrance of Jerry Barclay a moment later had a marked effect upon the company. He was known to the four men and not especially liked by any one of them. The Colonel had begun to feel for him a sharp, disquieted repugnance. The one person in the room to whom his entrance afforded pleasure was June, and this she made an effort to hide under a manner of cold politeness. An immediate constraint fell on the party which the passage of the evening did not dispel. Gracey was angry that the advent of this man whom he mentally characterized as “a damned European dandy” had deprived him of a tête-à-tête with June. He had not intended, as the young girl feared, to ask her to marry him. He had the humility of a true lover and he felt that he dared not broach that subject yet. But he had hoped for an hour’s converse with her to take with him on his journey as a sweet, comforting memory. Sullivan detested Jerry, whose manner he found condescending, turned from him, and began talking with an aggressive indifference to his host. But the Colonel was the most disturbed of all. What worried him was the difference between June’s manner to Jerry to-day, when others were present, and June’s manner to Jerry yesterday, when they had been walking alone on Van Ness Avenue. By eleven o’clock they had gone and Allen having stolen to bed, the sisters were left together in the sitting-room. They were silent for a space, Rosamund moving about to put out lights, give depressed cushions a restoring pat, and sweep the ashes of the fire into a careful heap beneath the grate, while June idly watched her from the depths of an arm-chair. “Aren’t people funny?” said the younger sister suddenly, turning from her kneeling position on the rug, the hearth-brush in her hand. “They seem to be so different in different places.” “How do you mean?” said June absently. “Who’s different in a different place?” “Well, Barney is. He’s all right and looks just as good as anybody up at the mines. And down here he’s entirely different, he looks so red, and his feet are so big, and his hands never seem to know where to go unless he’s talking about mining things. His clothes never looked so queer up at Foleys, did they? They seemed just like everybody else’s clothes up there.” “Oh, Barney’s all right,” returned the other, evidently taking scant interest in the problem. “I’m glad he and Mitty are going to be married.”