"She's dead wrong," Howard said, carelessly, "but I hope she'll write to me when I'm away. I shall want to hear that Smith has been snowed under." "Of course she'll write to you," Laura encouraged him. ("No, they can't have fixed it up. He wouldn't say that, if they were engaged.") "Say, Laura, I suppose you--it would bore you to send me a postal once in a while? You might tell me how Fred's business is getting along." "She can tell you herself. (Good gracious! She's turned him down! Poor old Howard!) I'm not very keen on writing letters, but I'll blow in a postal on you once in a while, to tell you that Fred is still in the market." "I'd be awfully pleased if you would," he said, eagerly. They were crossing Penn Park, and Laura, looking ahead, said, nervously: "See this dreadful person coming along the path! Is he drunk?" "He certainly is," Howard said, laughing. She drew a little nearer to him--and instantly he had a friendly feeling for the lurching pedestrian! "It frightens me to death to see a man like that," she said. "He ought to be arrested," Howard said, joyfully--her shoulder was soft against his! "Not that he would hurt anybody--he's just happy." "I'm not sandy, like Fred," she confessed. "Oh, Fred would undertake to reform him," he agreed, laughing. "Fred is--oh!" she broke off with a little shriek; the man, stumbling, had caught at her arm. "_Ex_cuse me, lady, I--" Howard's instant grip on his collar spun him around so suddenly that the rest of the hiccoughing apologies were lost in astonishment; he stood still, swaying in his tracks, and gaping at the receding pair. "The dude thought I was mashin' his girl," he said, with a giggle. "Did he touch you?" Howard said, angrily. He had caught her to him as he swung the man aside, and just for an instant he felt the tremor all through her. "I ought to have choked him!" But she was laughing--nervously, to be sure, but with gaiety: "Nonsense! poor fellow--he stumbled! Of course he caught at my arm. Only just for a minute it frightened me--I'm such a goose!" "You're not!" he said. But for the rest of the way to the Childses' house, he was very much upset. Laura had been scared, and it was his fault; he had taken the west path through the park, because that was the longest way home, and then he had bowled her right into that old soak! "I could kick myself for taking the west path," he reproached himself, again and again.