ane? They're just dudes."

"Why! of course, Carl, you silly boy! You don't suppose I'd take
Clements seriously, do you? You silly boy!"

"I'm not a boy."

"I don't mean it that way." She sat up, touched his shoulder, and sank
back. He blushed with bliss, and the fear that some one had seen, as
she continued: "I always think of you as just as old as I am. We
always will be, won't we?"

"Yes!"

"Now you must go and talk to Doris Carson. Poor thing, she always is a
wall-flower."

However much he thought of common things as he left her, beyond those
common things was the miracle that Gertie had grown into the one
perfect, divinely ordained woman, and that he would talk to her again.
He danced the Virginia reel. Instead of clumping sulkily through the
steps, as at other parties, he heeded Adelaide Benner's lessons, and
watched Gertie in the hope that she would see how well he was dancing.
He shouted a demand that they play "Skip to Maloo," and cried down the
shy girls who giggled that they were too old for the childish
party-game. He howled, without prejudice in favor of any particular
key, the ancient words:

"Rats in the sugar-bowl, two by two,
Bats in the belfry, two by two,
Rats in the sugar-bowl, two by two,
Skip to Maloo, my darling."

In the nonchalant company of the smarter young bachelors up-stairs he
smoked a cigarette. But he sneaked away. He paused at the bend in the
stairs. Below him was Gertie, silver-gowned, wonderful. He wanted to
go down to her. He would have given up his chance for a motor-car to
be able to swagger down like an Eddie Klemm. For the Carl Ericson who
sailed his ice-boat over inch-thick ice was timid now. He poked into
the library, and in a nausea of discomfort he conversed with Mrs.
Cowles, Mrs. Cowles doing the conversing.

"Are you going to be a Republican or a Democrat, Carl?" asked the
forbidding lady.

"Yessum," mumbled Carl, peering over at Gertie's throne, where Ben
Rusk was being cultured.

"I hope you are having a good time. We always wish our young friends
to have an especially good time at Gertrude's parties," Mrs. Cowles
sniffed, and bowed away.

Carl sat beside Adelaide Benner in the decorous and giggling circle
that ringed the room, waiting for the "refreshments." He was healthily
interested in devouring maple ice-cream and chocolate layer-cake. But
all the while he was spying on the group gathering about Gertie--Ben
Rusk, Howard Griffin, a