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even give the devil his due if he happened to have a skirt on, would you?"

"Now don't be horrid!" pouted Eunice. "You asked me foah an opinion and I gave it. She did look passé to me, I can't help it if I've got eyes, can I?"

"No, but you really ought to buy 'em some spectacles."

"Rose-colohed ones like yoahs, I suppose?"

Understanding perfectly the spirit that prompted these sallies, Jock was no whit affronted by them. "Say," he said, pleasantly enough, "did you invite me over here this evening just to have me listen while you hurl bouquets at another girl?"

"Anothah what? 'Girl' is a teens-and-twenties word, remembah!" So unforeseenly that it took him a moment to accustom himself to the transition, she became apologetic. "Oh, I'm sorry, Jock. Really. Don't pay any attention to me. I reckon I'm—prejudiced."

He rather liked her for that. It seemed to him one of the few genuine things he had ever heard Eunice say.

"Let's talk about somethin' else," she suggested.

He had difficulty in analyzing her subsequent remarks. She seemed to be determinedly and gradually leading up to something, but to what he could not surmise. He was aware of an increasing tension—both in himself, and in her. She talked much faster than usual, and inconsecutively, bridging wide gulfs between topics with a single word, or even not troubling to bridge them at all. And as she talked she looked into her lap, at her fidgeting fingers, out of the window . . . everywhere, in fact, but at him.

"What is this," he thought uneasily. "What's it all about?"