Ann Arbor Tales. Karl Edwin Harriman

spoke earnestly, almost passionately—"Flo, you're a girl in a million!"

      "There!" she cried gaily, "that's better than 'sensible.'"

      He smiled.

      "In a million," he repeated as though to himself. "I can never, never forget you——"

      "Oh, Jack!" Again the old note of playful raillery crept into her voice. "Now you've gone back. Of course you can't forget me; at least you mustn't, really you mustn't; it wouldn't be fair."

      He took up his hat from the little table.

      "Are you going?" she asked.

      "I'd better," he said, simply.

      "And shan't I see you again?..."

      Before he could reply she cried: "But I can see you graduate! I can see you get the Athens scholarship; and I shall too. And oh, Jack, when I read some day about you I shall be so glad—so glad I'll cry!" As she spoke he saw the thin mist that he remembered seeing once before, gather over her eyes again. He touched her lightly on the cheeks with the tips of his fingers, and, stooping kissed her forehead.

      "Good-bye," he said.

      She took his hand and pressed it.

      "Good-bye—and the best luck in the world!" she cried.

      She heard the door close behind him. For a long time she did not move from among the cushions. Finally she rose. From the top shelf of the teak wood bookcase she took down a Japanese rose jar, and from it drew out a little card portrait of a young sweet-faced girl. She stood at the window and lifting her eyes from the portrait gazed off down the street.... The pink faded from her cheeks.... The photograph slipped from her fingers.... She sank upon her knees and hid her face among the cushions.... By and by she rose and went out into the hallway and up the stairs....

      Her mother, entering below, called to her.

      "I'm up here dressing, dear," she answered. "I had a note from Ed Trombley—you remember him, mother—a '90 man. His class is having a reunion and he's back for it. He has asked me to drive to the Lake with him—you don't care do you?"

      "No child...."

      And the frail, gray-haired woman went quietly into the little round room with her sewing.

      THE KIDNAPPING