"Open the window a second, will you?" Fred said; "that smoke does hang around.--Howard, I believe they'll think I'm trying to lasso Mr. Weston into marrying me! Poor old boy, you know when he was young, before the flood, some girl turned him down, and I understand he's never got over it. The cousins will think I'm trying to catch him on the rebound! Funny, isn't it, how the elderly unmarried female is always trying to make other people get married? I think it's a form of envy; sort of getting what you want by proxy. Men don't do it." "Men are not so altruistic," he said. Frederica's face bloomed in the darkness, rose-red. They went out to the elevator, and dropped down to the entrance in silence. Howard, cranking his car, and getting a slap on the wrist that made him bite off a bad word between his teeth, thought to himself that Fred Payton was a stunner! He said so that night to Laura Childs, when they were sitting out a dance at the Assembly. They had talked about his _gloria-matis_, and she had thrilled at its cost, and pleaded with him to show it to her. "I'm crazy to see it! Please!" "Fred didn't care a copper about it," he told her, with some amusement. "She's sort of woozy on reforms." Laura nodded. "Fred's great, perfectly great," she said, looking down at the toe of her slipper, poking out from her pink tulle skirt. "She has a man's brain," he said. "Now, why do men always say that sort of thing?" Laura objected, her eyes crinkling good-naturedly. "Brain has no more sex than liver." Howard made haste to apologize: "'Course not! I only meant she's awfully clever, you know." Laura agreed, a little wistfully: "I admire Fred awfully. Do you know, she talked to the girls in the rubber-factory out in Hazelton about the Minimum Wage? She wanted me to go there with her, but I'd promised Jack McKnight to play tennis. Well, I'm afraid I wouldn't have gone, anyhow," she added, soberly; "those things bother Father, and it isn't as if I could accomplish anything, as Freddy can. If anybody asked me to make a speech, I should simply die. But Fred has no end of sand," Laura ended; her admiration was as honest as it was humble. "Sand?" Howard said; "you bet she has sand! Why, she is going to take a bungalow out in Lakeville this summer, and live there all by herself. She wants to read and study, and all that sort of thing." "By herself?" said Laura, really startled. "You don't mean without even a maid?" "So she says." "Aunt Nelly will never allow it! And, really, it wouldn't be safe. She ought to take Flora along, at least." Upon which Howard boldly tried Fred's own argument: "Why shouldn't she be alone? She'll have a revolver." "I wouldn't do it for a million dollars!" said Laura. "And, besides, nobody goes to Lakeville; it's awfully common." "Fred is above that sort of thing," Howard said. For once the good-natured Laura was affronted. "I don't pretend to be like Fred--" she began, but he interrupted her: