"Who is your young friend?" inquired Mrs. Linceford, with a shade of
doubt in her whisper, as they came out on the balcony.

"Master"--Leslie began to introduce, but stopped. The name, which she
had not been quite certain of, escaped her.

"My name is Dakie Thayne," said the boy, with a bow to the matron.

"Now, Mrs. Linceford, if you'll just sit here," said Mr. Wharne, placing
a chair. "I suppose I ought to have come to you first; but it's all
right," he added, in a low tone, over her shoulder. "He's a nice boy."

And Mrs. Linceford put her eye to the telescope. "Dakie Thayne! It's a
queer name; and yet it seems as if I had heard it before," she said,
looking away through the mystic tube into space, and seeing Jupiter with
his moons, in a fair round picture framed expressly to her eye; yet
sending a thought, at the same time, up and down the lists of a mental
directory, trying to place Dakie Thayne among people she had heard of.

"I'll be responsible for the name," answered Marmaduke Wharne.

"'Dakie' is a nickname, of course; but they always call me so, and I
like it best," the boy was explaining to Leslie, while they waited in
the doorway.

Then her turn came. Leslie had never looked through a telescope upon the
stars before. She forgot the galop, and the piano tinkled out its gayest
notes unheard. "It seems like coming all the way back," she said, when
she moved away for Dakie Thayne.