ellow ought to know how
if he ever has to, so I've slipped in a few lessons. I can keep off my
partner's feet, anyway. Well, Steve Putnam took me round that night and
introduced me to some girls. I guess if they'd known my mother was
living in New Haven and married to a grocer, they wouldn't have had
anything to do with me. Maybe I ought to advertise the fact, but I
don't--simply because I can't stand for my stepfather, and so mother
won't stand for me. Mother and I never could get on, though; and it's
funny, too--as a general rule I can get on with 'most everybody. I told
Prof. Farmer the other night there must be something wrong with a fellow
who can't get on with his own mother--but he only laughed. Of course,
Mr. Hunt, I'm not exactly sailing under false pretenses, either; if any
girl wanted to make real friends with me--I'd tell her all about myself
first."

"Of course," I murmured.

"And the same with men. Steve, for instance. He knows all about me, and
his father has a lot of money, but he made it in soap--and Steve's from
the West, anyway, and don't care. Gee, I'm wandering--it's the ale, I
guess, Mr. Hunt; I'm not used to it. The point is. Steve introduced me
round, and I like girls all right, but Susan's kind of spoiled me for
the way most of them gabble. I can't do that easy, quick-talk very good
yet; Steve's a bear at it. Well--I sat out a dance with one of the
girls, a Miss Simmons; pretty, too; but she's only a kid. It was her
idea, sitting out the dance in a corner--I thought she didn't like the
way I handled myself. But that wasn't it. Mr. Hunt, she wanted to pump
me; went right at it, too.

"'You know Mr. Hunt awfully well, don't you?' she asked; and after I'd
said yes, and we'd sort of sparred round a little, she suddenly got
confidential, and a kind of thrilled look came into her eyes, and then
she asked me straight out: 'Have you ever heard there was
something--_mysterious_--about poor Mrs. Hunt's death?'

"'No,' I said.

"'Haven't you!' she said, as much as to tell me she knew, all the same,
I must have. 'Why, Mr. Kane, it's all over town. Nobody knows anything,
but it's terribly exciting! Some people think she committed suicide, all
because of that queer Miss Blake.... She must be--_you_ know! And now
she's run away to Europe! I believe she was just afraid to stay over
here, afraid she might be found out or arrested--or something!'

"That's the way she went on, Mr. Hunt; and, well--naturally