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"Say," broke in Burnholme, chuckling, "how about that? Scoop tells me she disgraced herself."

"He calls me Scoop, isn't it senseless?" Cecily said gravely to Yvonne.

"I understand," Burnholme went on with evident relish, "that the floor came up and whacked her on the back of the head."

"Don't sound so perfectly delighted!" cried Cecily. "You wouldn't have liked it if you'd seen it. I was no lady. Besides, it hurt. It made a bump. Feel the bump, Jock." She ducked her head, and Jock prodded the back of it with his forefinger. "Feel it?"

"No."

"Well, it's there! You're a punk phrenologist."

"What tickles me," said Bill, "is—well, in the first place, I positively forbade her ever even to see that mutt she was with. This proves I had God on my side. And in the second place, she's always prided herself on being the only up-to-date woman in captivity who never got lit. She——" He broke off, and laughed into Cecily's eyes so intimately that Jock had a queer and cold sensation of not being present at all. "Remember the day I met you?" he asked her.

Cecily dimpled—whether in sentimental or merely humorous recollection it was impossible to determine. "Certainly do."

"It was at a picnic," Bill informed Jock and Yvonne, "and she sat there holding two paper drinking cups—gin in one, water in the other. She'd drink the water and touch the gin to her lips, pretending it was the chaser, and then dump the rest of it on the ground. She did that all afternoon, and I, guileless and honest, trying to keep pace with her, lapped up approximately three quarters of a quart of gin alone and single-handed and presently passed right out of the picture. Never