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dered deep in the pasty cushion of his face. After hearkening to two selections by Jock, he had said "You're hired" in such a drear, dead voice that Jock had been compelled to whisper to Yvonne, "Hired or fired?" before he could be sure just how to answer. From the very beginning, August Schultz delighted him. He always referred to him as "my Boss" with becoming, if synthetic, reverence, and was fond of giving squinty impersonations of him for the benefit of all and sundry. Also he made him the unwitting hero of several hilarious rhymes, noteworthy among them one beginning: "I prithee, August Schultz, reveal to me, Who in the hell doth do thy dentistry?" . . .

He had rather expected that his mother would prove difficult to handle in this contretemps, but, as he afterward informed Yvonne, "You can't jar that lady!" Mrs. Hamill gave vent to a few calm whys and wherefores, characterized the whole affair as "simply mad," and washed her hands of it. To Saunders Lincoln only did she confide her true attitude.

"There wasn't any use making a fuss," she said. "Though goodness knows I wanted to! Just imagine Jock, of all boys in the world, contenting himself with playing the banjo in a cheap wayside dancehall! I don't know what's come over him. Yes, I do too, it's that Yvonne, she has him wrapped around her little finger. He's so dazzled, he can't see beyond his own nose. If I were not so sure this was just a phase—but it is a phase. It's got to be!"

"What's Yvonne like?" Saunders Lincoln queried.

"Beautiful as a dream, wise as all the ages, shallow, superficial, rather notoriously immoral—I've had her looked up, of course—and at least six years older than Jock," said Mrs. Hamill all in a breath. "And, strange to say, really in love with him, unless my intuition dep