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all of them strange to Jock, and on each made pithy comment. "Awfully dumb but he can dance" . . . "Piggy Day, he's too fat to mean anything, of course" . . . "Mere infant, still in Lawrenceville" . . . "Bill Burnholme, precious" . . . "Henry Ernest, mother's promoting that" . . . "Norman Farrell, he's terrible, one of those smarty ones—makes jokes about baths on Saturday night and things like that" . . . "Jimmy Cruthers, he probably likes me better than any of them and I hate him the worst—that's always the way, isn't it? . . .

"Of course," she ended, "you'll have to meet one or two of them. I want you to pass judgment."

"Right. I want to. I wouldn't be surprised if you needed some more of my looking after—that's too many beaux for one little woman, anyway. Which of them is the lead-off man, by the way?"

"N-none of them."

"What? Say," Jock scoffed, "I know you eighteen-year-olds. You're always in love with somebody, or pretending you are. You've always got somebody in your minds to get maudlin about when there's moonlight. Now, which one is it, Cecily? the 'precious' Bill?"

"I guess so," Cecily said vaguely. "I'm sort of engaged to him. And then again I'm not. It just depends."

She added with dignity, "If you know us eighteen-year-olds as well as you think you do, you'd know that as a rule it's different ones at different times. It may be almost anybody. Rodolph Valentino, or Richard Barthelmess, or Red Grange of Illinois, or our best friend's husband, or the policeman on our beat—or anybody."

"I see," grinned Jock, "that I must brush up on my

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