petulant push. "Oh, take it away!" she said impatiently; "I've eaten
so many now, it makes me sick to look at them!"

The donor showed no resentment at this ingratitude, holding the box on
his knees, continuing to help himself to its contents with unabated
zest, and to keep the conversation up to concert pitch: "--the only
girl I ever saw who'd stop eating Alligretti's while there was one
left--another proof that there's only one of you--I said right off,
that any co-ed that Jerry Fiske would take to must be a unique
specimen--" He did not further specify the period to which he
referred by his "right off," but the phrase gave Sylvia a tingling,
uncomfortable sense of having been for some time the subject of
speculation in circles of which she knew nothing.

They were near Mercerton now, and as she gathered her wraps together
she found that she was bracing herself as for an ordeal of some sort.
The big car stopped, a little way out of town, in front of a long
driveway bordered with maple-trees; she and the young man descended
from one end-platform and Eleanor Hubert from the other, into the
midst of loud and facetious greetings from the young people who had
come down to meet them. Jerry was there, very stalwart, his white
sweater stretched over his broad chest. All the party carried skates,
which flashed like silver in the keen winter sun. They explained with
many exclamations that they had been out on the ice, which was, so the
three new-comers were assured many times, "perfectly grand, perfectly
dandy, simply elegant!"

A big, many-seated sled came jingling down the driveway now, driven by
no less a personage than Colonel Fiske himself, wrapped in a fur-lined
coat, his big mustache white against the red of his strongly marked
old face. With many screams and shouts the young people got themselves
into this vehicle, the Colonel calling out in a masterful roar above
the din, "Miss Marshall's to come up here with me!"

He held in his pawing, excited horses with one hand and helped Sylvia
with the other. In the seat behind them sat Jerry and Eleanor Hubert
and the young man of the trolley trip. Sylvia strained her ears to
catch Jerry's introduction of him to Eleanor, so that she might
know his name. It was too absurd not even to know his name! But the
high-pitched giggles and deeper shouts of mirth from the rest of the
party drowned out the words. As a matter of fact, although he played
for an instant a rather importan