“But is he nice and respectable himself?” Jess inquired. “You know some of these writers are horribly poor and go about with threadbare clothes. He might not be the right sort of man for us to know at all.” “Jess!” Eva exclaimed severely. “The idea of your thinking that because people are poor they can’t be respectable! We shall be very glad to meet your friend, Rex,” and Jess felt that she was in such disgrace that when Mr. Keeler was presented she tried to redeem herself by being excessively friendly. And this was not difficult for her to do. He was certainly very different from what she had expected. He had neither long hair like the traditional poet, nor trousers fringed around the bottom like the literary hireling of Grub Street. Indeed, she found him quite handsome; he dressed almost as well as Rex did, and he was a most interesting talker. And all the while she was sensible of having seen his face somewhere before. She thought at first it might have been in a portrait painted as a frontispiece to his book. At the first opportunity she slipped off to the boys’ room and looked it up. But there was no portrait there. Finally she decided that she must have passed him in the street in the city some time and resolved to think no more about it. Eva was pleased with the visitor too. They had a very merry supper party. The clash of opinions about what to do with their money was stilled for the time while they all listened to the very entertaining stones told by their guest. He was, it seemed, on his way home from the oil regions of Pennsylvania whither he had gone to secure the local color for a new story. In fact he had traveled very extensively in his short life, for he was not yet thirty. At one time he had lived among a tribe of blacks in Africa; at another been a member of a party of exiled Russians, on tramp to the mines of Siberia. He was telling of an exciting adventure he had had among the Arabs when the twinkling lights in a train crossed the trestle caused him to come to a sudden pause. “I must be thinking of the time,” he said taking out his watch, and trying to see the figures on its face by the moonlight. “I don’t want to miss the last train in to town.” “Oh, do, please,” pleaded Rex. “You can stay here just as well as not. Syd won’t be home and you can have his room. The last train goes in half an hour; you won’t nearly have exhausted your stock of stories by then. Please stay.” “We should be very glad to have you do so, Mr. Keeler,” said Eva. “But this is trespassing altogether too much on your hospitality,” he returned. “Besides, you scarcely know me and I didn’t come prepared. I left Philadelphia this morning, meaning to be back there by night.” “Oh, we’ll fix you out,” said Rex with an air of finality, “so go on with your Arab story.”