Flaming youth

Front matter

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\ V

Part I Chapter I

The food was vital with air and fresh With the scent of many flowers. It was a happy room, a loved room, even a petted room. There was about it a sense of stir, of life, of habitual holiday. Some rooms retain these echoes. People say of them that they have character or express individuality. But this one’s character was composite, possessing attributes of the many who had come and gone and laughed and played and perhaps loved there, at the behest of its mistress. A captious critic might have complained that it was over-crowded. The same critic might have said the same of Mona Fentriss’s life.

TKougK a chiefly contributory part of the room’s atmosphere, Mona Fentriss’s personality was not fully reflected in her immediate environment. The room was not a married room. It suggested none of the staidness, the habitude, the even acceptances of conjugal life. The bed stood outside, on the sleeping porch. It was a single bed. Unfriendly commentators upon the Fentriss menage had been known to express the conviction that marriage was not a specially important element in Mrs. Fentriss’s joyous existence. Nevertheless there were the three chil¬ dren, all girls. There was also Fentriss.

The mistress of the room lolled on a cushioned chaise longue near the side window. She was a golden-brown,

strong, delicately rounded woman, glowing with an effect of triumphant and imperishable youth. Not one of her features but was faulty by strict artistic tenets; even the lustrous eyes were set at slightly different levels. Yet the total effect was that of loveliness; yes, more, of compelling charm. One would have guessed her to be still short of thirty.

“This is final, is it?” she asked evenly of a man who was standing near the door.

“It’s final enough,” he answered.

He shambled across the room to her side, moving like a bear. Like a bear’s his exterior was rough, shaggy, and seemed not to fit him well. His face was irregu¬ larly square, homely, thoughtful, ^nd humorous. “Want to cry?” he asked.

“No. I want to swear.”

“Go ahead.”

Downstairs a door opened and closed. There fol¬ lowed the rhythmic crepitation of ice against metal.

“There’s Ralph home,” interpreted the wife. “Call down and tell him to shake up one for me.”

“Better not.”

“Oh, you be damned!” she retorted, twinkling at him.

. “You’ve finished your day’s job as a physician. I need one.”

As he obediently went out she mused, with the instinct of the competent housekeeper:

“Gin’s gone to twenty-five dollars a gallon. That’ll rasp poor old Ralph. I wonder how much this will jar him.” By “this” she meant the news which she had justforced from the reluctant lips of Dr. Robert Osterhout. She pursued her line of thought. “Who’ll take over the house? The girls know nothing about running it. Perhaps he’ll marry again. He’s very young for fifty.”

The two men entered, Fentriss carrying the shaker.

He set it down, crossed the room and kissed his wife. There was an effect of habitual and well-bred gallantry in the act. He was a slender, alert, companionable look¬ ing man with a quizzical expression. Dr. Osterhout poured out a cocktail which he offered to Mrs. Fentriss. She regarded it contemptuously.

“Bob, you devil! That’s only half a drink.”

“It’s more than you ought to have.”

“Pour me a real one. At once! Ralph; you do it. Come on.”

With a shrug and a deprecatory smile at the physician, Ralph Fentriss filled the glass to the brim. The Fentriss cocktails were famous far beyond the suburban limits of Dorrisdale for length as well as flavour.

“Here’s to Prohibition,” said their concoctor in his suave voice, before drinking; “and to your better health, my dear.”

“A toi,” she responded carelessly. “Leave the shaker, will you, Ralph? Bob and I are talking.”

Fentriss nodded and went. A moment later the concert grand in the big living room below stairs responded to a touch at once delicate, strong and distinctive.

“How I used to love his music!” said Mona Fentriss half to herself; “and still do,” she added. “Bob.” She turned upon her physician with laughing reproach in her eyes. “Don’t you know better, after all these years, than to try to keep me from doing anything I want to do? I always get what I want.”

“If you don’t, it’s not for lack of trying.”

“I don’t even have to try very hard. Life has been a generous godfather to me. But I’ve always wanted more. Like Oliver Twist, wasn’t it? Or Jephthah’s daughter?”

Dr. Osterhout grinned. “It was the horse leech’s daughters that were always crying ‘Give! Give!’ ”

“Why cry for it? Reach out and help yourself,’’ sKe said gaily. “Them’s my principles. And now the fairy godfather is going to cut me off with a shilling. Or a year. Or less.”

“Unless you obey orders it’ll be considerably less.”

“Let it 1 I’d rather do as I please while it lasts.

“ ‘I’ve taken my fun where I found it,

I’ve rogued and I’ve ranged in my time,’ ”

t »

sang Ralph Fentriss at the piano below to music of his own composing.

“So have I,” murmured his wife. Her eyes grew bril¬ liant, craving, excited as they wandered to the flowerdecked mantel upon which stood half a dozen photographs. All were of men. Though they varied in age and indica¬ tions of character, they presented a typical similarity in being well-groomed and attractive. They might all have belonged to the same club. “Bob, do many women confess to their doctors?”

“Lots.”

“To you?”

“No. I don’t let ’em.”

“Why not? I should think it would be interesting.”

“It’s only a trick to gratify the senses through recol¬ lection,” said the blunt physician. “Reflected lechery.”

“You know too much, Bob. Then you won’t be my father confessor?”

“I doubt if you could tell me much,” he said slowly.

A smile, unabashed and mischievous, played upon her lips. “That’s an ambiguous sort of answer. Sometimes I suspect that very little gets past you.”

“I’m trained to observation,” he remarked.

“And to silence. So you’re safe. I think it would do

XX

me good to confess to you.” She grew still and pensive. “Bob, if I’d been a Roman Catholic do you suppose I’d have been—different?”

“Doubted. Would you want to be?”

“I don’t really know that I would. Anyway I’m what I had to be. We all are.”

“Fatalism is a convenient excuse.”

“No; but I am,” she insisted. “It’s temperament. Temperament is fate. For a woman, anyway,” she added with a flash of insight. “You don’t blame me, do you? I couldn’t help it, could I?”

He smiled down at her, tolerant but uncompromising. “Oh, don’t stand there looking like God,” she fret¬ ted. “Do you know what I’d resolved to do? Will you laugh at me if I tell you?”

“Probably. Therefore tell me.”

“I was going to be a pattern of all the proprieties after I turned forty.”

“Too early,” he pronounced judicially.

“Why? What do you mean?”

“Make it fifty.”

She knit her smooth forehead. “Because" I wouldn’t be pretty then?”

“Oh, you’d charm and attract men at seventy. But you wouldn’t have such a—well, such an urgent tempera¬ ment. That passes, usually.”

“Bob! You beast!” But she laughed. “You’re very much the medical man, aren’t you?”

“It’s my business in life.”

“Well, the whole discussion is what you call an academic question, anyhow. If you and your hateful medical sci¬ ence are right, I’ll never see thirty-eight, let alone forty. I don’t feel thirty-seven. There’s so much life in me. Too much, I suppose.”

“No. Not too much.”

“No more flutters for pretty Mona,” she mused. “At least she’s had her share. Do you think Ralph cares?”

“You’re the one to know that.”

“If he does, he’s never given any sign. But then, it’s years since he’s been true to me.”

Her companion made a slight, uninterpretable gesture.

“Shall I tell him? Your verdict, I mean.”

“Great Judas, no! Why stir him up? It’s going to be hard enough on him anyway.”

“Is it?” she said wistfully. “He’ll miss me in a way, won’t he? I am fond of him, too, you know.”

“Yes. I understand that.”

“But 3 r ou don’t understand why I’ve gone trouble-hunt¬ ing, out of bounds.”

“Yes. 1 understand that, too.”

“Perhaps you do. You understand lots more than one would think from your dear, old, stupid face.” She paused. “Tell me something, honestly, Bob. Has there been much talk about me?”

“Oh, there’s always talk and always will be about any¬ one as brilliant and vivid as you.”

“Don’t evade. Some of the older crowd look at me as if they thought I was the Scarlet Woman come back to life. I’m not the Scarlet Woman, Bob. Only a dash of pink.”

He smiled indulgently.

“It’s strange,” she mused, “how the tradition of be¬ haviour clings in the blood, in that set. Your set, Bob. Ah, well! Discretion is the better part of virtue, as someone said. And I haven’t been discreet, even if I have been virtuous. You believe I’ve been, don’t you, Bob?”

“What, discreet?”

Again she laughed, showing little, even, animal-like teeth.

“No; the other thing.”

“I believe whatever you want me to.”

“Meaning that you reserve your own opinion. But you’re a staunch friend, anyway. . . . The trouble with me is that I was born too soon. I really belong with this wild young age that’s coming on the stage just as I’m going off; with the girls. Listen 1”

Below stairs Fentriss, still at the piano, had swung into the rhythms of the Second Rhapsody, wild and broken as white water seething through a rock-beset gorge.

“That’s the measure they dance to, the new generation. Doesn’t it get into your torpid blood, Bob? Don’t you wish you were young again? To be a desperado of twenty! They’re all desperadoes, these kids, all of them with any life in their veins; the girls as well as the boys; maybe more than the boys. Even Connie with her eyes of a vestal. Ah!”

A new note had merged with the music, a hoarse, child¬ ish croon, following the mad measure with an interwoven recitative.

“That’s Patricia. She’s dancing to it.”

“How can you tell?” asked the physician.

“By the way she’s singing. Little devil! I wonder what it’ll be like by the time she’s grown up,” mused the mother.

“Which won’t be so long, now.”

“So it won’t. I keep forgetting that. She seems such! a baby. What a queer little creature it is, Bob!”

“She’s a terror. But there’s something lovable about her, too. A touch of you in her, Mona.”

“Of me? She’s no more like me than I’m like my name¬ sake of the well-known Lisa family. Nor like the older girls, either. Well, why shouldn’t she be different from them? Coming five years after I’d supposed all that sort of thing was over. She was pure accident. How I tried to get out of having her! Perhaps that’s why she’s such a strange little elf. But Ralph’s crazy about her—as much as he can be crazy about anything. I thought for a time she’d bring us together again.”

“But you found variety more amusing than pure domes¬ ticity,” suggested the physician.

“I? It wasn’t I that began it; it was Ralph. You know I never went in for even the mildest flirtation until long after Pat was born; until I began to get bored with the sameness of life.”

“Boredom leads more women astray than passion,” pro¬ nounced the other oracularly; “in our set, anyway.”

“Oh, astray,” she fretted. “Don’t use mid-Victorian pulpit language.”

“I was only philosophising about our lot in general.”

“We’re a pretty rotten lot, aren’t we! Though I sup¬ pose the people you don’t know, the people that nobody knows, are just as rotten. Ah, well, so long as one pre¬ serves appearances! And Ralph has no kick coming. He’d gone on the loose before I ever looked sidewise at any other man. They say he’s got a Floozie now, tucked away in a cozy corner somewhere.”

“Do they?”

“Has he?”

“Ask him.”

‘‘Too good a sport,” she retorted. “I shouldn’t be ask¬ ing you if I thought you’d tell me. Very likely you don’t know. He hasn’t been boring you with confessions, I’ll bet! Men don’t, do they ?”

“Only of their symptoms.”

“But they confess to women.”

“The more fools they!”

“Can’t I wring a confession out of you?” she teased. “Why haven’t you ever made love to me, Bob?”

C< T oo much afraid of losing what little I’ve got of you,” he returned sombrely.

“How do you know you wouldn’t have got more? How do you know that I wouldn’t have given you—every¬ thing?”

“Everything you could give wouldn’t be enough.”

“Pig! You don’t want much, do you!”

“Have you ever really cared for any of your partners in flirtation?”

“You speak as if I’d had dozens,” she pouted.

“It isn’t a question of the quantity but of the quality of your attachments. If I’d ever asked anything of you it would have been—well, romance.” He laughed quietly at himself. “Something you haven’t got to give. You see, I’m a romantic and you’re not. You’ve sought ex¬ citement, admiration, change. But not ‘the light that never was on land or sea.’ You’re adventurous and pas¬ sionate, but not romantic. It’s quite a different order pf thing.”

“And you’re brutal. Besides, you’re wrong; quite wrong.”

“Am I?” His glance ranged the faces on the mantel. “Which one?”

She gave him a swift smile. “He isn’t there. You never saw him. His name was Cary Scott.”

“Was ? Is he dead ?”

“He’s out of my life; or almost. He’s married. He was hardly more than a boy when I knew him. Nine years ago in Paris. He was studying at the Poly technique, doing his post-graduate work and doing it brilliantly, I believe. He went mad over me. My fault; I meant him to; it amused me. I was attracted, too. There was a vividness of youth about him. I didn’t realise how much I was going to miss him out of my life, though, until we came back. I did miss him. Like hell!”

“He was the one to whom you really gave?”

“Hardly so much as a kiss. I wanted to keep it that way, and he was slave to me. He was an innocent sort of soul, I think. Every year he sends me a card on my birthday—that was the date of our first meeting—to re¬ mind me that sometime we are to take up our friendship again. I never answer but I never quite forget.”

“Ah, that’s the sort of thing that I’d have asked but never expected of you.”

“No; you never could have had it. That’s the sort of thing that one gives but once.” Suddenly she shot out her white, strong hand and gripped his wrist. “If you’d ever been really in love with me,” she said fiercely, “you wouldn’t let me die. You’d find some way to save me.”

His rugged face softened with pain. “My dear,” he said, “don’t you know that if there were any way in the world, any sacrifice-”

“Yes; I know; I know! I’m sorry. That was a rot¬ ten thing to say.”

“You’ve taken it all like such a good sport.”

“I’m trying. Let’s not talk of it any more. Let’s talk of the girls. Bob, how much is there to heredity?”

“Oh, Lord! Ask me to square the circle. Or make the fifth hole in one. Or something easy.”

“I was just thinking. Who’s going to look after them? Ralph won’t be of much use. He’s too detached.”

“Well, the family physician can be of service in some ways,” he said slowly. “Particularly if he chances to be a family friend, too.”

“Would you?” she cried eagerly. “They’ll be a handful. Any modern girl is. But I’d rest easier, knowing you were on the job. Speaking of resting, I had rather a rotten night last night.”

“What were you doing in the evening?”

“We had a little poker party here in the room.”

He shrugged his heavy shoulders. “If you won’t pay any heed to your doctor’s orders-”

“You know I won’t.”

“Then you’ve got to pay the piper.”

“Haven’t you got any tiling that will make me sleep?”

“Were the pains bad?”

“Pretty stiff. Will they get worse?”

“I’m afraid so, my dear.”

“More dope, then, please.”

“Dangerous.”

“Well?” She smiled up into his face, pleadingly, temptingly. “Well, Bob?” Her voice dropped. “What’s the difference? Since it’s a hopeless case. Don’t be an inquisitor and sentence me to torture in the name of your god, Science,” she whispered.

He yielded. “All right. But you’ll stand it as long as you can?”

“Good old Bob I” she murmured. She reached for his hand, twined her fingers around it, nestled it into her firm and rounded neck. Then she laughed.

“Well?” he queried.

“Association of ideas,” she answered. “I was think¬ ing of Cary Scott.”

He winced and drew his hand away. “What of Cary Scott?”

“If he doesn’t come back pretty soon, what a joke it will be on him!”

Chapter II

The Fentriss house stood high on a knoll overlook¬ ing the Country Club which constituted Dorrisdale’s chief attraction as a suburb. Mona Fentriss had built it with a legacy of $25,000 left to her just before Patricia’s birth, and Ralph had put in the $15,000 necessary to complete the work after the architect’s original estimate had been exhausted, leaving the place still unfinished by one wing, all the decorations, and most of the plumbing. The extra cost was due largely to the constantly alter¬ ing schemes of Mona. She wished her house “just so,” and just so she finally had it from the little conservatory off the side hallway to the comfortable servants’ suite on the third floor. If the result was, architecturally, a plate of hash, as Ralph called it, nevertheless the house was particularly easy to live in.

To Mona Fentriss belonged the credit for this. What she had of conscience was enlisted in her domestic econ¬ omy. As Ralph Fentriss’s wife she might be casually unfaithful. As mistress of his household she was im¬ peccable. The effortless seductiveness of her personality established its special atmosphere throughout the place. It made the servants her devoted and unwearying aids, and broadly speaking, a household is much what the servants make it. People gravitate naturally to a well-run place. Liic seems so suave and easy there. Guests of all ages came and went at Holiday Knoll, mostly men. Mona cared little for women, and her own strong magnetism for

men had been inherited by her two grown daughters.

There was no special selectiveness about the company. All that was required of them was that they should be superficially presentable and contribute something of amusement or entertainment to the composite life of the menage. At least nine-tenths of them were making love to Constance or Mary Delia or Mona herself, openly or surreptitiously as the case might be.

It made a pleasantly restless and stimulating atmos¬ phere. In the city itself there would have been criticism of the easy standards; indeed there was more or less which drifted out to the Knoll. But judgments in the suburbs are kindlier. And Dorrisdale is quite fashion¬ able enough to establish its own standards.

Any week-end would find half a dozen or more cars bunched on the driveway, having brought their quota of pleasure-seeking youth out from New York or from Philadelphia or Baltimore or Princeton. The girls had carte blanche, within reasonable limits, for invitations, which they were careful not to abuse. A few errors in judgment had reacted unpleasantly not only upon them¬ selves but upon their undesirable guests. Mona Pentriss could act with decision and dignity within her own walls. Her social discrimination was keen if not rigid, and she possessed a blighting gift of sarcasm, mainly imitative, the most deadly kind used against the young. Neither of the girls was likely ever to forget her imitation of Con¬ nie’s friend from Minneapolis whose method of handling a fork, according to Mrs. Fentriss’s theory, had been derived from bayonet practice in camp; nor her presen¬ tation of a steamship acquaintance of Dee’s who had too pathetically bewailed his losses at bridge.

Partly from theory, partly as a trouble-saving device, the mother seldom attempted any exercise of direct authority upon the children. A system of self-government was established, or, rather, encouraged to grow into being. It was ordained that each of the girls should have her own room to hold like a castle, into which not even the parents might intrude unbidden, and for which the occupant was held responsible. Constance’s room was luxurious, lazy, filled with photographs mainly of groups in which her charming face was always central. The special mark of Mary Delia’s was its white and airy kemptness. Patricia’s was a mess of clothing and odds and ends, tossed hither and thither and left to lie as they fell until a temporary access of orderliness inspired the child to clean up. It suggested a room in which no win¬ dow was opened at night. Fentriss called it the hurrah’s nest.

Through this feminine environment he moved like a tolerant but semi-detached presiding genius. His profes¬ sion as consulting engineer took him early to the city and that, or something else, often kept him late. Being a considerate though rather selfish person, he invariably telephoned when detained over dinner time, which made the less difference in that there were always two or three men dropping in after golf, hopeful of an invitation to stay: Harry Mercer or the Grant twins, or Sam Gracie, or one of the Selfridges, father or son. Envious mothers whispered that Mrs. Fentriss was trying to catch Emslie Selfridge for Constance, and that it might not be as good a match as she supposed; things weren’t going any too well at the Selfridge factory since the strike. They also wondered acidly that Ralph Fentriss was so easy as to let his pretty wife go about so much with Steve Selfridge, who was almost old enough to be her father, it was true, but whose reputation was that of a decidedly unwithered age. It would no more have occurred to Fentriss to raise objections over Mona’s going where she pleased, with whom she pleased than it would have occurred to her to ask his permission. All that was past long ago.

The outside member of the family was Robert Osterhout. He lived near by in a small studio-bungalow where he conducted delicate and obscure experiments in the therapy of the ductless glands. Thrice a week he lec¬ tured at the University, for he had already won a repu¬ tation in his own specialty. Having inherited a sufficient fortune, he was letting his private practice dwindle to a point where presently the Fentriss family would be about all there was left of it. Into and out of the house on the knoll he wandered, casual, unobtrusive, never in the way, always welcome, contributing a quiet, solid background to the kaleidoscopic pattern of its existence. In the most innocent of senses he was Vami du maison. If he was and had for years been in love with Mona, the fact never made a ripple in the affectionate friendliness of their relations nor in the outward placidity of his life. It was accepted as part of the natural scheme of things. Fen¬ triss recognized it, quite without resentment. Mona won¬ dered at times whether Constance and Mary Delia were not aware of it—not that it would have made any differ¬ ence. She herself made little account of it, yet she would sorely have missed the stable, enduring, inexpressive devo¬ tion had it lapsed. Bob was the intellectual outlet for her restless, fervent, exigent nature, too complex to be satisfied with physical and emotional gratifications alone. One could talk to Bob; God knows, there were few enough others in her set with any understanding beyond the current chatter of the day! After her sentence was pronounced she talked to him even more frankly than theretofore.

“If Ralph had died, Bob, I’d probably have married

you.”

“Would you?”

“What do you mean by that ? That you wouldn’t have

married me?”

“I’d probably have done as you wished. I always do.”

“So you do, old dear 1 That’s the reason I’d have mar¬ ried you. That, and to keep you in the family, where you belong.”

“I’ll keep myself in the family, Mona, if you want me there.”

“But Ralph didn’t die,” she pursued. “I’m going ta instead. You can’t marry Ralph.”

“Not very well.”

“But you might marry the girls.”

“All of ’em?”

“Connie, I think. She’s most like me.”

“She isn’t nearly as pretty as you.”

Mona blew him a kiss. “She’s much, much prettier. Don’t be so prejudiced. And she’s very intelligent, for twenty-two.”

“About half my age.”

“Oh, she’d catch up fast enough. She’s quite mature.”

“Much too attractive for an old husband, thank you. That way trouble lies—as you know 1”

“Thanks, yourself!” She thrust out her tongue at him in an impudent, childish grimace. “Perhaps you’d prefer Mary Delia.”

“I understand Dee better than I do Connie.”

“Do you? It’s more than I do. She’s devilish frank about other people but she never gives herself away.”

“That’s what I like about her.”

“You really are quite chummy with her, aren’t you?” said the mother, looking at him curiously.. “But that’s because you’re so much older. She doesn’t care much about men really.”

“She’s unawakened. There’s hot blood under that cool skin.”

“I wonder what makes you think that?”

“Oh, a medically trained man notices little things.”

“So does a woman. But I haven’t seen- Has Dee

begun to awake?”

“Oh, no! She’s quite unaware of herself in that way. Very likely she won’t until after she’s married.”

“After? Won’t that be a little late?”

“It’s the first awakening a lot of women have. And a harsh one for some.”

“What a lot of unpleasant things doctors know about life!”

“Life’s got its unpleasant phases.”

“Particularly for women. . . . Yet I’m glad I’ve been a woman.” A little, sensuous quiver passed over her ten¬ derly modelled lips. She smiled, sighed, and reverted to her other thought. “But you’re going to have your hands full with the Fentrisses. Really, you’d do better if you married one.”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t do as well. I might be too taken up with the one.”

She darted a glance at him, full of shrewd questioning with a touch of suspicion. “You could care for Dee,” she interpreted. “I’d be more flattered if it were Con¬ nie.” She pressed an electric button. To the trim maid who appeared she said, “Send Miss Dee here, please, Mollie.”

“What are you going to do, Mona?” demanded Osterhout in some alarm, for he knew the devastating frank¬ ness with which she was wont to deal with those nearest her.

“Wait and see.”

There was a rhythmic, swift footfall on the stairs, the door was thrown open, and Mary Delia Fentriss swung in upon them.

“Hello, mother!” she said. “Hail, Lord Roberts! What’s the summons?”

Her bearing attested poise, careless self-confidence, and a brusque and ready good humour. She was tall, rounded, supple, browned, redolent of physical expression. At first sight one knew that here was a girl whose body would exhale freshness, whose lips would be cool, whose breath would be sweet, whose voice would be even, whose senses and nerves would be controlled. A student of humankind might have appreciated in her the unafraid honesty and directness which so often go with the con¬ sciousness of physical strength, in women as well as men. Her nickname in the family was Candida. She was not beautiful; not even pretty, by strict standards. But there was about her a sort of careless splendour.

“Been playing golf?” asked her mother.

“Yes. Cantered in with a fort 3 ^-seven.”

“Nice going! How would you like to marry Bob?”

Neither the expression nor the attitude of the girl altered, but her cool and thoughtful eyes turned upon Osterhout. “Has his lordship been making proposals for me?”

“No; I haven’t!” barked the gentleman in the case.

“It was wholly my idea,” proffered Mona.

“I thought Bobs was your special property. Why mark him down? It isn’t bargain day.”

“He’s a fairly good bargain, though,” pointed out her mother.

“Don’t mind me if you want to discuss my good points,” said Osterhout, lighting a cigarette and seating himself upon the window sill.

“X don’t,” said Mary Delia. “Let’s consider him as a market proposition. His age is against him. You’re forty, aren’t you, Bobs? . . . He doesn’t squirm, mother. That’s a bad sign; shows he’s reached the age where he doesn’t care. Or is it a good sign, showing his self-con¬ trol?”

“Dee, I’d beat you if I married you.”

Her eyes lightened. “Would you? I believe you’d try.” With a bound she was upon him. One arm crooked under his shoulder, the heel of the other fist was thrust under his chin. “Improved jit,” she panted. “You’d have your work cut out.”

There was a quick shift, a blending of the two figures, and the slighter was bent backward almost to the floor. “Give up?” demanded Osterhout, his face close above the laughing lips.

“Yes. Lord, you’re quick! Thought I had you. Take your penalty and let me up.”

Ignoring the invitation he set her in a chair and re¬ stored his deranged necktie. “I’ll apologise for the forty,” said Dee. “You’re not so old and feeble! To resume, as we say when serious; you’re homely as a scalded pup-”