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Rh respectable retiring hour. We both of us are fellow-laborers. Let's be fellow-playmates too."

"I'm bored to death," he would write to her, in the little penciled notes she would find concealed inside the First Aid reference-book he borrowed from her desk, and returned afterward with such apparent off-handedness (he was careful to appear nothing but correctly official at the Alliance). "I'm bored. Come, please, and cheer up my lonely dinner-hour to-night, will you, Pal?" Or in a similar note, a day or two later, "You look wan and tired, Becky." (He had adopted Becky after their first dinner-party together.) "As a physician I prescribe one cool forty-mile drive next Saturday P.M., followed by a refreshing repast in sound of salt-sea waves, a dance or two, for exercise afterward, and a not too late return (I promise you, little Miss Prim) by gorgeous moonlight. What do you say?"

There was never any taint of love in Dr. Booth's rollicking notes, nor in his manner either, Reba concluded. There was not, anyhow, any stealthy imprisoning of her hand—nothing of that sort. Whatever peculiar pleasure she herself felt, in dancing with him, she was sure was not shared in the same way by him—a man of his sophistication, who according to his own statement had danced himself stale two winters ago. They were friends, that was all. She was glad that she had gotten away from the narrow Ridgefield idea that a man and a girl couldn't be friends without being lovers. Why, Dr. Booth sometimes in the automobile would even grasp her hand, with a free one of his, and give it a hard, delighted squeeze, as he laughed jovially at some remark or naïve question of hers. It