"You're coming up to Harding!" said Betty, ruefully. "Then I needn't have come down here at all."
"Oh, but I didn't know it till to-day," explained Mr. Blake, soothingly. "I got the telegram while I was breakfasting this morning. I can't telegraph my answer, because the wires are all down, so you might tell them I've written, or you might post my answer for me in Harding. I have the greatest confidence in your ability to get through the drifts, Miss Wales."
"Are you"—Betty hesitated—"are you coming up about this, Mr. Blake?"
For answer he passed her the telegram. It was an invitation from the newly-elected president of the Dramatic Club—Beatrice Egerton had gone out of office at midyears—to lecture before an open meeting of the society a week from the following Saturday.
"Goodness!" said Betty, returning the telegram. "I didn't know you were a lecturer too, Mr. Blake."
"Oh, I'm not much of one," returned Mr. Blake, easily. "I suspect that the man they had engaged couldn't come, and Miss Stuart—you know her, I presume—who's an old friend of mine, suggested me as a forlorn hope. You see," he added, "'The Quiver' is a new thing and doesn't go everywhere yet, as your friend Miss Watson was clever enough to know; but before I began to edit it, I used to write dramatic criticisms for the newspapers. Some people didn't like my theories about the stage and the right kind of plays and the right way of acting them; so it amuses them now to hear me lecture and to think to themselves 'How foolish!' 'How absurd!' as I talk."
"I see," laughed Betty. "I'm afraid I don't know much about dramatic criticism."
"Well, it doesn't amount to very much," returned Mr. Blake, genially.
"That's why I stopped doing it. Shall you come to hear me lecture, Miss
Wales?"
Betty laughed again. "I shall if I can get an invitation," she said. "I suppose it's an invitation affair."
"And Miss Watson will be there?"