"RAPU

APUNZEL, Rapunzel, let down your hair,' chanted Wirt in his cool, laughing voice.

Minnie Bee, otherwise Mary Beatrice, with an obliging twist of the wrist, let down her hair. It rippled down in the full, silver light of the moon until it splashed the wood of the old porch seat. Between these dividing waves her face showed softly childlike, with deeply fringed lids. The eyes were unexpectedly dark, of an intense blue, like that sometimes to be seen in butterfly wings.

Roddy Ivor, crowded on the step below, where he had to exercise much ingenuity to avoid crushing Minnie Bee's widely settling blue ruffles, looked up at her disapprovingly and admiringly. He thought she made an awfully pretty picture in the moonlight; but he wanted to knock his cousin Wirt down for ordering a girl about like that before a porchful of laughing boys, and most of all he wished to take Minnie Bee for a walk, and talk to her like a brother.

Even

Still, it was harmless enough. Even Roddy, who had been presented to Minnie Bee only five minutes earlier, could see that it was merely a case of a particularly charming flower and a cloud of newly emerged butterflies. So might one conceive of an over-appreciative butterfly bidding a rose turn its enchanting head this way or that. All the young faces lifted to Minnie Bee were smilingly satisfied, as at a pleasantly fulfilled expectation. Only that brute Seaton had another look.

Minnie Bee, too, felt an adverse influence. She flung a wide, peering glance to where Seaton glowered on his vine-smothered railing.

Wirt, who had turned about at Minnie Bee's glance, stared, and went to the railing. Seaton had swung himself over it. and was walking rapidly up the street in the direction of the Green Hotel, a college hostelry on the edge of the grove-like

campus.

"Good riddance," muttered Wirt. He took the railing himself, gathered in Minnie Bee's golden-ribboned guitar, and began to strum one of those intermittent, non-committal accompaniments which go with any old-or new-thing.

"An hundred months have passed,
Lorena,"

hummed some one. A melodious buzz tollowed. They began to sing it definitely. Minnie Bee did n't know a word of the old thing. She sat silent, softly embracing her blue ruffles, her eyes fixed on Roddy's slightly averted face. Roddy knew every word of the song, and he was leading the singing in a brilliant baritone, vibrant with youth, and deeply colored with youth's strange, emotional foreknowledges.

All young creatures appear rapt with the music they make. Roddy now had that look added to his all-the-time looks of lordliness and gaiety and calm resolve. Wirt stopped strumming. The other voices died out one by one, chiefly because their owners had arrived at the ends of memory; but Roddy sang on, dreamily unaware, his gaze plunged into the dark of the campus trees.

He suddenly became aware that he alone sang, and stopped and stopped inquiringly. glancing up at Minnie Bee. She clapped softly. Roddy colored in the moonlight. Roddy, facing the door in bidding Min

nie Bee a short farewell, had a glimpse of her stout Aunt Annie ascending the stairway, heavily tired after the long day, an institution flourishing elsewhere than in great cities. Minnie Bee's stout Uncle Joe, owner of a small harness shop much patronized by college men who kept. horses, came to stand for a moment in the door, pipe in mouth.

"Good evening, young gentlemen," he said.

Through an open window Roddy took in a small, bright parlor, its one rock of refuge Minnie Bee's piano, about which swirled waves of flimsiness.

"Well," said Wirt.

They went bareheaded down the steps, turning for a final glance at the awfully pretty picture of Minnie Bee with her golden hair streaming in the moonlight.

A few yards down the street they met another crowd bound for Minnie Bee's front porch. Wirt indicated the silent. Roddy to them.

"Just had him to Minnie Bee's. First time. Don't speak to him. It 's dangerous to waken them suddenly."

They pretended sympathetic understanding, and passed, tiptoeing with exaggerated caution. Their laughter broke behind the two. Beneath a street light Roddy stopped and regarded Wirt.

"You must n't misunderstand, you know," said Wirt in a careless tone.

"I'm not misunderstanding the darned. insolent way you fellows have with her," said Roddy, scornfully. "'Rapunzel, Rapunzel! I like your nerve.'

"So does Minnie Bee," said Wirt. "Why, confound you, Rod, she's a regular pet with us all. She's had a crowd of boys on that front porch ever since she was fifteen. Every one of them adored her. I adore her. So do you-what?"

"And that fellow. Seaton?"

"Say," said Wirt, going on, "it's a queer thing, but, do you know, I believe Seaton's working himself up to the point. of asking Minnie Bee to marry him."

"That brute!" said Roddy, shortly and hotly.

At Roddy's tone Wirt began to laugh.

immoderately, steering him the while. toward a tree-pillared lawn. Beyond the columns of the tree-trunks appeared the columns of the porch, rising as tall as trees to the mansion's roof. Withdrawn in the seclusion offered by these sat a placid group composed of Miss Page Presley, her mama, and her little sister Virginia.

Other boys dropped in. Miss Presley's hair was long and black, and would have been almost startlingly effective streaming around her against the glimmering white background of house front, but no one said, "Snow White, Snow White, let down your hair."

The sturdy, graying professor of Greek, her father, came to stand for a moment in the door, cigar in hand.

"Good evening, young gentlemen," he said.

As they bade the family good night Roddy glimpsed a familiar type of interior, spacious, cool, set discreetly about. with old, valuable, rather terribly permanent possessions.

"Nice girl, Page," commented Wirt as they strolled off across the sparsely lighted campus, "but slow," he added, yawning.

On the porch of Roddy's temporary home sat the remainder of his temporary family: Cousin Andrew Morrison, professor of Latin, peacefully asleep in his long chair; Cousin Sally, his wife; and Roberta, their daughter.

Berta was one of those girls who never look girlish because they weigh ten pounds. too much and have Roman noses. There was a kind fiction among her girl friends to the effect that Berta disliked boys.

She considered her brother Wirt and her cousin Roddy with suspicion which might be characterized as serial. It was always likely that they had been up to something of which she would disapprove could she find them out.

"Well, Rod's been initiated at last," announced Wirt, out of a mere impish desire to start something.

He gave Roddy his laughing, narrowed. look, and settled himself comfortably on the railing. Roddy took the porch swing near Berta.

"That girl!" said Berta.

"If you mean Minnie Bee," murmured Wirt.

"Why, Berta, I 'm sure Minnie Bee is a very nice, sweet, young girl," put in Cousin Sally, indescribably mingling patronage of Minnie Bee with ladylike disapproval of Berta's too violent emphasis.

"And I warn you right now, Roddy Ivor," continued Berta, "that if I meet you out walking with her you need n't expect me to speak to you. I don't speak to my own brother in those circumstances."

A tolerant smile grew on Roddy's lips. "Women," said Wirt. It seemed to cover the ground for him.

"I presume," said Berta, "that you 'd like me to call on Minnie Bee?"

Wirt addressed Roddy:

"That lovely, refined, talented girl is n't good enough for Berta, here, to visit."

"Her cousins are 'n't lovely and refined and talented, and you know perfectly well, Wirt Morrison, that, while Minnie Bee may be all you say, we girls can't possibly take her up. Heaven knows I'm not snobbish," said Berta; "no one can accuse me of that. I dare say Minnie Bee is much better looking and far cleverer than I am; but my relatives are at least presentable, and I know who my ancestors were."

A faint frown developed between Roddy's fine brows. Minnie Bee's cousins had been pointed out to him, vivid little girls with big, bold eyes and noisy voices. No harm in them, but not the girls you 'd want your sister to be seen with; yet Minnie Bee had to be seen with them. Beyond doubt Minnie Bee's cousins were regrettable.

"Think I'll go on up," said Roddy, rising.

"Me, too," said Wirt.

He came on into Roddy's room. "Confound such a town as this, anyhow!" said Wirt.

"Oh, clear out!" said Roddy. pulled off his coat.

He

"Talk about India," said Wirt, taking out his cigarette-paper. "India 's got nothing on this town when it comes to the caste curse."

He sat down on the foot of Roddy's bed and lighted up.

"Clear out, I tell you!" said Roddy, who wished to think about Minnie Bee in peace.

"First," said Wirt, "there's the military gang."

"I'll put you out," promised Roddy.

"The military gang," repeated Wirt, wafting a smoke ring perfect enough to be a fairy's bracelet, "which considers itself just a little bit better than anything else on earth because it has to do with the art of bossing the earth about."

"Tell me something I don't know," begged Roddy.

"And the college men are nearly as bad. Any doddering old professor of the deadest language there is thinks himself the superior of the cleverest business man in town."

"I told you I would," said Roddy, now in pajamas. He started for Wirt, who fended him off, laughing.

"And the larger merchants lord it over the smaller chaps, like Minnie Bee's uncle. Everybody's got some one to look down on until at length we arrive at,-" he nodded toward the stately colored gentleman who was bringing in a carafe of drinking water,-"and even there-" he broke off abruptly. "Sam," he said, "did you see Dan Medley about hunting me up a dog for Miss Minnie Bee?"

"Now, Mr. Wirt," said Sam, "yo' do not want t' 'ave no doin's at all wid dat po' white trash of a Dan Medlar. I'll fin' yo' a pup fo' de young lady fus day I takes off."

He went out grandly, having settled the

matter.

"What did I tell you?" demanded Wirt. "Talk about India."

"Not to me," said Roddy, removing the slenderer Wirt by main strength from the bed, and shoving him doorward. "You 're worse than any of them. You were quite surprised a while back because that surly brute of a Seaton might actually ask a beautiful girl a thousand times too good for him actually to marry him, damn him!"

cheerful silence. He stopped for a moment to cram his soft hat into a pocket of the coat which he was already carrying.

Minnie Bee, high up among unfamiliar hills, looked critically about her and said that she had never been up there.

They went on, Roddy slightly in the lead, his eyes shining with the surprise he had in store for Minnie Bee. A riotous wind was whipping his roomy shirt about his beautiful slant of back and shoulder. His head made a dusky glory in the blue day. Now and again he looked back at Minnie Bee with a smile, appreciative of her prowess thus far, and encouraging her to further feats. Minnie Bee, who felt lifted on wings of lightness, always smiled back. She was a hovering radiance in his wake. At the edge of the highest hill Roddy said in a quiet tone of triumph:

"Now."

They stepped over the crest. Far, far below, in a deep, wide cup, compacted of the colors of the fall, lay a green valley. In it a white town shone by a river of gold. The cup was brimmed with sunshine and patterned with cloud shadows. It offered up beauty forever.

"I came on all this of a sudden one day last fall," said Roddy, his eyes alight. Minnie Bee understood. He had wished her, too, to see it suddenly, like that, because it had been wonderful to him.

He spread his coat for her beneath a slender locust, and threw himself down near, among the thin, pointed little golden leaves, already scattered in the just seared grasses.

Minnie Bee looked at the white town. It was very far away, so far away that it was spanned by a spray of goldenrod. She hummed:

"Lo! there hath been dawning

Another blue day."

She did not know when she had ever felt so happy.

"Now," said Roddy, "let us talk about everything in the world.”

"What must we begin with?" asked Minnie Bee.

"Suppose," said Roddy, rising on his elbow, "we begin with friendship."

"Friendship?" asked Minnie Bee in an odd tone, almost as if she had never heard of such a thing.

"Friendship," said Roddy, "is the most wonderful relation in the world. You can't always depend on your lover or your brother, but you can always depend on your friend.”

"I never had one," said Minnie Bee.

She was thinking of the girls whom she had known in a way all her life, of the lovely, sweet girls in the town down there with whom she had gone to church and to school, but among whom she had never had a friend.

"You can have one now," said Roddy, deliberately, "if you want him."

"You!" cried Minnie Bee. It was the strangest exclamation.

Roddy colored furiously.

"I beg your pardon," he flashed in clean-cut words. His quick thought was that Minnie Bee had heard of a thing of which it was altogether unlikely she should have heard, a long-ago action of his, repented in full, paid for in full, done with forever, he had hoped, save as one never is done with anything.

Minnie Bee put an impulsive hand on his rigid arm.

"You see, I happened just to be thinking of girl friends," said Minnie Bee, somewhat shakily. "Why, I-I 'd love to be friends with you."

He searched her with his gaze. She offered him her hand in the sweetest manner to seal their pact. Its firm, generous pressure reassured Roddy wholly.

"I'm glad," he said, still holding the convincing hand, "because, when I met you last evening, it was what you might call friendship at first sight with me."

Minnie Bee, still smiling beautifully at Roddy, took back her hand. She did not say what it had been at first sight with

her.

ONCE more Minnie Bee and Roddy wandered on the sheer rim of the wide cup of the hills. Fire haze of Indian summer