and the living room unaccountably closed. Evelyn banging out the opening
measures of the "elegant jazz piece."

He was still staring moodily at the closed door when the din ceased and
he again heard Evelyn's voice. "A penny for your thoughts, Mr. Carroll. A
real honest-to-goodness-spendable penny!"

"I was thinking," he remarked quietly, "that your sister is a very
beautiful woman."

"Naomi? Shucks! She isn't bad looking--but she's _old_. Abominably
old! Thirty!"

He glanced down on the girl and smiled. "That does seem old to you,
doesn't it?"

"Treacherously! I don't know what I'd ever do if I was to get that old.
Take up crocheting, probably."

The conversation died of dry-rot. Carroll was not at all pleased. His
excuse--the plea that he had come to call upon Evelyn--had been taken too
literally. He had fancied--in his blithe ignorance of the
seventeen-year-old ladies of the present day--that he could engineer
himself into a worthwhile conversation with the Lawrences. Since meeting
them, he was doubly anxious. There was a thinly veiled hostility about
the man which demanded investigation. And about the woman there was a
subtle atmosphere of tragedy which appealed to the masculine
protectiveness which surged strong in his bachelor breast.

But Carroll was a sportsman. The girl had carried things her own way--and
he was too game to spoil her evening. Therefore, he temporarily gave over
all thought of a chat with the Lawrences and devoted himself to her
amusement. He informed her that the jazz music she had strummed was
simply "glorious" and that he regretted he knew very little popular
stuff. She leaped upon his remark--

"Oh! do _you_ play: _really_?"

He was in again. "I have--a little."

"I wonder if you would? Here's the _grandest_ little old song I bought
downtown--" and she placed on the piano a gaudy thing with the modest
title--"All Babies Need Daddies to Kiss 'Em." Its cover exposed a tender
love scene wherein a gentleman in evening clothes was engaged in an act
of violent osculation with a young lady whose dress was as short as her
modesty. Carroll shrugged, placed his long, slender fingers on the
keys--shook his head--and went to it.

He played! A genuine artist--he tried to enter into the spirit of the
thing and succeeded admirably. The itchy syncopation rocked the room. His
hostess snapped her fingers deliciously and executed a few movements of a
dance which Carroll had heard referred to vague