“No, I don’t.  Why do you always laugh about that girl, anyhow?”

Julius made a little grimace.  “She wrote some awfully slushy letters to Phil Bowen, and he read them aloud at the frat house one night.”

“Didn’t you slap him?” Claude demanded, turning red.

“Well, I would have thought I would,” said Julius smiling, “but I didn’t.  They were too silly to make a fuss about.  I’ve been wary of the Georgia peach ever since.  If you touched that sort of peach ever so lightly, it might remain in your hand.”

“I don’t think so,” replied Claude haughtily.  “She’s only kind-hearted.”

“Perhaps you’re right.  But I’m terribly afraid of girls who are too kindhearted,” Julius confessed.  He had wanted to drop Claude a word of warning for some time.

Claude kept his engagement with Miss Millmore.  He took her out to the skating pond several times, indeed, though in the beginning he told her he feared her ankles were too weak.  Their last excursion was made by moonlight, and after that evening Claude avoided Miss Millmore when he could do so without being rude.  She was attractive to him no more.  It was her way to subdue by clinging contact.  One could scarcely call it design; it was a degree less subtle than that.  She had already thus subdued a pale cousin in Atlanta, and it was on this account that she had been sent North.  She had, Claude angrily admitted, no reserve,—­though when one first met her she seemed to have so much.  Her eager susceptibility presented not the slightest temptation to him.  He was a boy with strong impulses, and he detested the idea of trifling with them.  The talk of the disreputable men his father kept about the place at home, instead of corrupting him, had given him a sharp disgust for sensuality.  He had an almost Hippolytean pride in candour.

X

The Erlich family loved anniversaries, birthdays, occasions.  That spring Mrs. Erlich’s first cousin, Wilhelmina Schroeder-Schatz, who sang with the Chicago Opera Company, came to Lincoln as soloist for the May Festival.  As the date of her engagement approached, her relatives began planning to entertain her.  The Matinee Musical was to give a formal reception for the singer, so the Erlichs decided upon a dinner.  Each member of the family invited one guest, and they had great difficulty in deciding which of their friends would be most appreciative of the honour.  There were to be more men than women, because Mrs. Erlich remembered that cousin Wilhelmina had never been partial to the society of her own sex.

One evening when her sons were revising their list, Mrs. Erlich reminded them that she had not as yet named her guest.  “For me,” she said with decision, “you may put down Claude Wheeler.”

This announcement was met with groans and laughter.

“You don’t mean it, Mother,” the oldest son protested.  “Poor old Claude wouldn’t know what it was all about,—­and one stick can spoil a dinner party.”