nified,
way."

"Jack, I don't believe any such stuff and guff. You're tied up to them
harder and tighter than ever."

I could see I'd made a bull's eye, for Jack began to bluster, but I cut
him short with:

"Go to the devil your own way," and walked out of the club. I reckon
that Jack felt mighty disturbed for as much as an hour, but a good
dinner took the creases out of his system. He'd found that Miss Moore
didn't intend to go to the Blairs', and that Miss Curzon had planned to
go to a dance with her sister somewheres else, so he calculated on
having a clear track for a trial spin with Miss Churchill.

I surprised your Ma a good deal that evening by allowing that I'd go to
the Blairs' myself, for it looked to me as if the finals might be
trotted there, and I thought I'd better be around, because, while I
didn't see much chance of getting any sense into Jack's head, I felt I
ought to do what I could on my friendship account with his father.

Jack was talking to Miss Churchill when I came into the room, and he was
tending to business so strictly that he didn't see me bearing down on
him from one side of the room, nor Edith Curzon's sister, Mrs. Dick, a
mighty capable young married woman, bearing down on him from the other,
nor Miss Curzon, with one of his roses in her hair, watching him from a
corner. There must have been a council of war between the sisters that
afternoon, and a change of their plans for the evening.

[Illustration: "_Miss Curzon, with one of his roses in her hair,
watching him from a corner._"]

Mrs. Dick beat me stalking Jack, but I was just behind, a close second.
He didn't see her until she got right up to him and rapped him on the arm
with her fan.

"Dear Jack," she says, all smiles and sugar; "dear Jack, I've just
heard. Edith has told me, though I'd suspected something for a long,
long time, you rogue," and she fetched him another kittenish clip with
the fan.

Jack looked about the way I once saw old Miss Curley, the president of
the Good Templars back in our town in Missouri, look at a party when she
half-swallowed a spoonful of her ice cream before she discovered that it
was flavored with liquor.

But he stammered something and hurried Miss Churchill away, though not
before a fellow who was going by had wrung his hand and said,
"Congratulations, old chap. Just heard the news."

Jack's only idea seemed to travel, and to travel far and fast, and he
dragged his partner along to the