She dragged the Judge out of his library one March afternoon, that he might inspect with her a new set of sprayers which she was considering. The Judge went to his office all too seldom nowadays; Eleanor and Mrs. Tiffany used continually all kinds of diplomacies to keep him at his business, from which he stubbornly refused to retire. When they had driven their bargain, Eleanor guided and wheedled him to the office. The methodical Attwood, having his man there, thumped a pile of papers down before the Judge, representing that this demurrer must be in on Tuesday, that case tried or continued next week. The Judge sighed as he pulled the papers toward him. "They've nailed me, Nell," he said. "Here, I'll appoint a substitute. Send for Mr. Chester, Attwood--dining anywhere, Chester? Then take pot luck with us and pay me by escorting my business conscience home. I'll overwork myself if someone doesn't carry her away!" * * * * * The afternoon fog, forerunner of another rain, floated in lances above Montgomery Street. The interior valleys had felt their first touch of baking summer, had issued their first call on their cooling plant--the Golden Gate, funnel for mist and rain-winds. The moisture fell in sleety drops; yet only the stranger and pilgrim took protection of raincoat or umbrella. The native knew well enough that it would go no further. On these afternoons, neither cold nor hot, wet nor wholly dry, the blood is champagne and the heart a dancing-floor. At the moment when Eleanor stepped out into the home-going crowd, she, an instrument tuned to catch delicate vibrations from earth and sea and air, felt all this exhilaration. Life was right; the future was right; the display of a young female creature before the male--that most of all was right. And Bertram Chester, talking for the moment like his old, natural self, was a main eddy in the currents of joy-in-youth. "You are bonny to-day!" she said quite naturally as she looked him over. He blushed happily. And the blush helped restore him in her eyes as the natural Bertram Chester. "And you're the bonniest of the bonny. I never saw you look so full of ginger except--" he hesitated there, and her words rushed in to meet the emergency. "Thank you! Though I wasn't fishing, I am grateful just the same." "Then you do find something now and then that you can stand for in me?" "I find a great deal--when you are Bert Chester." He seemed to puzzle over this, to ponder it; so that she added: "Let's not talk conundrums in this air and this crowd! We're not blue-nosed, self-searching New Englanders. Let's keep away from Market Street and walk through the Quarter. They haven't yet taken the Easter things from the shop windows, and there's a darling atrocious group of statuary next door to The Fior d'Italia which you must see!" And then, as they turned the corner-- "What's the crowd? I'm for disremembering that I'm refined. I want to be curious!"