r, he said, in a gentle, grieved tone, "I'm sorry to see you
taking two, Mother."

Mrs. Wheeler looked at him over the coffee-pot with a droll,
guilty smile. "I don't believe coffee hurts me a particle,
Bayliss."

"Of course it does; it's a stimulant." What worse could it be,
his tone implied! When you said anything was a "stimulant," you
had sufficiently condemned it; there was no more noxious word.

Claude was in the upper hall, putting on his coat to go down to
the barn and smoke a cigar, when Bayliss came out from the
sitting-room and detained him by an indefinite remark.

"I believe there's to be a musical show in Hastings Saturday
night."

Claude said he had heard something of the sort.

"I was thinking," Bayliss affected a careless tone, as if he
thought of such things every day, "that we might make a party and
take Gladys and Enid. The roads are pretty good."

"It's a hard drive home, so late at night," Claude objected.
Bayliss meant, of course, that Claude should drive the party up
and back in Mr. Wheeler's big car. Bayliss never used his
glistening Cadillac for long, rough drives.

"I guess Mother would put us up overnight, and we needn't take
the girls home till Sunday morning. I'll get the tickets."

"You'd better arrange it with the girls, then. I'll drive you, of
course, if you want to go."

Claude escaped and went out, wishing that Bayliss would do his
own courting and not drag him into it. Bayliss, who didn't know
one tune from another, certainly didn't want to go to this
concert, and it was doubtful whether Enid Royce would care much
about going. Gladys Farmer was the best musician in Frankfort,
and she would probably like to hear it.

Claude and Gladys were old friends, from their High School days,
though they hadn't seen much of each other while he was going to
college. Several times this fall Bayliss had asked Claude to go
somewhere with him on a Sunday, and then stopped to "pick Gladys
up," as he said. Claude didn't like it. He was disgusted, anyhow,
when he saw that Bayliss had made up his mind to marry Gladys.
She and her mother were so poor that he would probably succeed in
the end, though so far Gladys didn't seem to give him much
encouragement. Marrying Bayliss, he thought, would be no joke for
any woman, but Gladys was the one girl in town whom he
particularly ought not to marry. She was as extravagant as she
was poor. Though she taught in the Frankfort High School for
twelve