"And about the other children, ma'am; I noticed several in the neighborhood while I was out. There was another very rude child named Buster Yates--at least the little girl who was with him said so--I couldn't help wondering----" "About what, Jane?" asked Mrs. Belknap indulgently. "I suppose everything in America is quite new and strange to you," she added rather proudly; "I shall always be glad to explain what you do not understand." "Would you mind telling me why so many little boys in America are called--_Buster_? It's a very curious name. I never heard it in England." Mrs. Belknap laughed heartily. "That's very easily explained," she said. "It is really a nickname taken from a series of humorous pictures in one of the newspapers. Quite possibly people are overdoing it," she added meditatively. Jane looked mystified. "Our Buster's name is really Everett Livingstone, and the Bliss child is Ralph, I believe; and Mrs. Yates's little boy is named Frederick. The Caldwells call their Arthur 'Buster,' and in town the Elwells and the Farleys and--yes, ever so many others have 'Busters.' It must have struck you as being very singular." "Yes, Mrs. Belknap," said Jane pointedly. "It did." As John Everett was returning from the city that night, and many nights thereafter, he found himself dwelling with singular intentness on the piquant face of his sister's English maid; it seemed to look out at him wistfully from the damp folds of his evening paper, and to haunt the twilight seclusion of the ferryboat deck upon which he was accustomed to tramp many a breezy mile in his daily trips across New York's spacious harbor. John Everett was a graduate of Yale and a budding lawyer, employed in a down-town law office. He had unhesitatingly expended every cent of a slender patrimony in obtaining his education, and at present was in the hopeful position of a strong swimmer striking out unhampered for a distant shore. He fully expected to reach that shore--some time; but a man swimming for his life in the deep and perilous current of an untried profession has no business to dwell upon the alluring vision of any woman's face. That the woman of his shy boyhood dreams was waiting for him on that far-off shore, he felt reasonably sure; but even this conviction could not prevent him from feeling sorry for Jane. She was struggling in deep water, too, and would she--could she reach the shore in safety, unless some one---- "I am a fool!" John Everett told himself vigorously, and squared his broad shoulders to the bracing ocean wind, which blew damp and salt from the vasty deeps outside the Hook. Half an hour later he came upon Jane at the corner, whither she had been sent to post a letter. There were half-dried tears sparkling upon her long lashes, and her mouth drooped pathetically at the corners. "What is the trouble, Jane?" he couldn't help asking; his blue eyes said more.