The Little Colonel's Knight Come Riding

IT was a cold snowy afternoon, late in January. Rob Moore, looking at his watch as he hurried along the street, found that he was ten minutes ahead of the time at which the next car was due to start to the Valley. Rather than wait on the windy corner or take refuge in the already crowded drug-store, he walked on down to the car-shed. He rarely left town this early. As he sprang up the steps and took his seat in the waiting car, he saw that it was the one usually filled by the school-children living in the suburbs. It was already nearly filled now by half-grown boys and girls, flocking in with their book straps and lunch-baskets. It made him think of his own High school days. They laughed and joked and called messages back and forth as freely as if they were at home. Here and there he recognized the younger sisters and brothers of some of his old classmates, so like them that it gave him a curious sense of having stepped backward several years. There was Wat Sewall wriggling and writhing out of his overcoat with the same contortions that Fred always went through with. That slap on the back with its accompanying "Hi, there, old man," was exactly like T. D. Williams' salutation. He nearly always laid a fellow out flat when he spoke to him. And the couple on the seat in front of him, exchanging class pins, was only a repetition of a scene he had witnessed dozens of times.

With a reminiscent smile he shook out the pages of the evening paper which he had bought as he came along and glanced at the head-lines. But before he had time to read further the girl in front of him exclaimed, "Look, Harry! Here comes Miss Sherman! Isn't she perfectly stunning in that dark blue broadcloth? I think she's the prettiest debutante of the season."