in the crack of the door again, this time with a purposeful
air. He was to develop into the type of man to whom an unpropitious time
and place are an irresistible temptation to demand a show-down. It is a
type that goes far, though it is not essentially popular. Judith sighed,
then resigned herself.

"Judy, I don't make you out."

"You don't have to."

"I do." Willard's voice was impressive, as even a fat boy's can be when
he is in the grip of fate and conscious of it. "I do."

"I'm sorry, Willard, dear," murmured Judith, with disarming sweetness,
but he was not to be turned from his purpose.

"Judy, are you going with me or not?"

"Going with you?"

"Don't be a snob. What else can I call it but going with me? I don't
know any other way to say it."

"Then don't say it."

"You've got my class pin and I've got yours. I know there isn't anybody
else. You let me call and take you places, but you won't let me----"

"What?"

Willard looked sheepishly down at his boots, then bravely up at Judith.
"Put my arm round you at picnics. Kiss you good-night."

Judith cut short this catalogue crisply.

"Spoon?"

This word was forbidden in the upper circles of the Green River younger
set, and Willard looked pained, but collected himself.

"We are the same as engaged," he insisted sturdily.

He had forced an issue at last, but Judith evaded it, laughing softly in
the dark.

"Oh, are we?"

"Aren't we?"

"How do you know there isn't anybody else?"

"Well, you won't look at Ed, and Murph don't count." Willard made this
pronouncement lightly, though the adamantine rules and impassable
barriers of a whole social order were embodied in it. "Murph that you're
so thick with, all of a sudden. He's a bully fellow, all right, next
captain of the team, probably. Good thing he's broken into the crowd a
little way. Too bad he's Irish. Murph don't count."

"No--no!" A sudden and poignant sweetness thrilled in Judith's voice.
The tenor of the Green River High School quartette, not ordinarily
sensitive to variations of tone in the voices of others, could not
ignore it. The change had disturbed him vaguely. It seemed to call for
some comment.

"Judy, you look great to-night.... I'd do anything for you."

"Then go home, Willard."

"You haven't answered my question."

"What question?"

"Don't tease."

"I honestly don't know."

"You don't hear one word I'm saying to you."

Judith laughed guiltily. "Then what makes yo