"Oh, father, father! You are not in the 'Eden' burial-plot. You are here with me. I shall never lose you." The girl's face was tenderly sweet with silent emotion as she turned to the man beside her. "I'm glad you told me that story. May I come down to your office in the morning for a little conference? I can come at ten." "Certainly. Come any time," York assured her, wishing the while that the plea of Jerusha Darby's that lay in his pocket was in the bottom of Fishing Teddy's deep hole down the Sage Brush. The next morning Jerry Swaim came into the office of the Macpherson Mortgage Company promptly at the stroke of ten by the town clock. "If I were only a younger man," York Macpherson thought, feeling how the presence of this girl transformed the room she entered--"if I were only younger I would fall at her shrine, without a question. Now I keep asking myself how a woman can be so charming, on the one hand, and so characterless maybe, shallow anyhow, on the other. But the test is on for sure now." No hint of this thought, however, was in his face as he laid aside his pen and asked, in his kindly, stereotyped way: "What can I do for you?" "You can be my father-confessor for a minute or two, and then make out my last will and testament for me," Jerry replied, with a demure smile. "So serious as all that?" York inquired, gravely, picking up a blank lease form as if to write. "So, and worse," Jerry assured him. But in an instant her face was grave. "You know my present situation," she began, "and that I must decide at once what to do, and then _do_ it. I'm so grateful that you understand and do not try to offer me friendship for service." York looked at her earnest face and glowing dark-blue eyes wonderingly. This girl was forever surprising him, either by flippant indifference or by unexpected insight. "You know a lot about my affairs, of course," Jerry went on, hurriedly. "Aunt Darby offered both of us--me, I mean, a home with her, a life of independent dependence on her--charity--for that, at bottom, was all that it was. And when I refused her offer she simply cut me until such time as I shall repent and go back. Then the same thing would be waiting for me. I know now that it was really wilfulness and love of adventure that most influenced me to break away from Philadelphia and--and its flesh-pots. But, York, I don't want to go back--not yet awhile, anyhow." It was the first time she had ever called him by that name, and it sent a thrill through her listener. "Is it wilfulness and love of adventure still, or something else, that holds you here 'yet awhile'?" York asked, with kindly seriousness. "Oh, wait and see!" Jerry returned. "She is not going to be _led_, whichever way she goes. I told Laura so," was York's mental comment. "Does this finish your 'confession'?" he asked.