"Talking, talking, all the time Algy talking," Elsmere broke in. "_I_ want to talk. Tell Caffrin 'bout my cat-pussy. Her awful sick. Her--" Catherine sprang up. Elsmere's conversation often needed to be suppressed. "Let's play tennis. Algernon, will you get the balls and rackets? You know where they are,--just inside the hall there. And Elsmere may run after balls for us. He can, so nicely!" Algernon obeyed the unexpected request patiently, and when he was gone, Catherine averted her face for the space of a minute. What she had hoped for came to pass, and when Algernon returned, his small brother had quietly vanished. "The older one may be monotonous, but the younger one is positively dangerous," Catherine thought to herself, as she took the balls from Algernon, saying: "Let's not play, after all. It's so very warm and Elsmere thought he didn't want to run after balls. You don't mind, do you?" "Why, no, I wasn't keen about playing," and Algernon, unconscious of the maneuver he had helped to execute, dropped back upon the railing and continued his _résumé_ of the _North American_ article. Catherine, meanwhile, having slipped the balls one by one into the pocket of her steamer chair, rested her long white hands upon the chair arms and sat quietly, hearing nothing of Mr. Chapman's statistics, her brown eyes dreamily fixed upon the sloping lawn, but seeing instead the Dexter campus, across which girls were moving, as she loved best to see them, in pretty light gowns on the way to evening chapel. Among them all her thought rested most lovingly upon a little girl with a plain face and big round glasses. "You dear old Alice!" she murmured, almost aloud, and roused herself guiltily to hear Algernon saying: "There are a lot of wide-awake men in Pittsburg." "Wide-awake girls in Winsted!" This time Catherine really did speak aloud, and Algernon looked up in surprised inquiry. "I beg your pardon," she said contritely. "It was very rude of me, but you set me off, yourself. The Wide Awake Girls are really going to be in Winsted this summer. Don't you know about them?" as Algernon still looked puzzled. "Why, no. All the Winsted girls seem wide-awake enough, I should say." "But I'm the only one who has a right to be called so in capital letters. I'll tell you all about it, but it has been such an important part of my life for the last year and more, that I forget every one who knows me doesn't know about it all.