ead
her off. Tell mother I'll be around to-night."

He intercepted Jennie at the car door, caught both her hands and pressed
them tight, pushed her back into her seat as he did so, climbed in and
sat down beside her. "I'm supposed to be saving Ben from the horrible
fate of getting dragged to church when it's really Sarah's Sunday," he
said. "If you'll just drive me around the corner, I'll explain."

But she prevented him with a little laugh when he would have begun. "This
is good enough for me. I don't want any explanation."

"It's pretty good," he agreed. "Stop a minute now we're safely around the
corner and let me have a look at you."

She obeyed him, literally, pulling up to the curb again, accorded him the
look he wanted and took, meanwhile, one of her own at him. Neither of
them, however, seemed to find just the phrase in which to announce the
result of this scrutiny. She started on again presently and he relaxed
against the cushion. "This is more like being home again than anything
that's happened yet," he said. "Are we to have a real visit?"

She was free till lunch she told him, and he, after saying "Well, that's
something," admitted his own engagement. "However, that's the best part
of two hours. The thing is not to waste any of it."

Naturally enough they wasted a good deal of it. They talked about the
little car they were riding in, how she had learned to drive, why she had
bought it; how Mr. Ferris, her boss, had said he wouldn't be any good for
the day after coming down-town in a tight jammed elevated train and how,
having tried the new method of transportation she had agreed with him;
how it was as easy to run as a typewriter.

A few minutes more of that, she thought, and she'd begin telling Ford
jokes, so she wrenched around to a new subject and asked him how much
he'd seen of France; what he thought of the French; how long he'd been
home; and what it seemed like to be in civilian clothes again;--topics
upon which he enlarged as well as he could. She had driven meanwhile,
north to Diversey Boulevard and had then turned west, around the ring.
They were out in the middle of Garfield Park when she said after a hard,
tight silence, "Isn't this perfectly ghastly?"

"It's awful," he agreed. "I don't know what's the matter with us--or
whose fault it is. But I certainly didn't mean to get started like this."

"I expect that's it," she told him. "Haven't you been trying to treat
me just exactly right? Mak