It makes no never minds to you who you're
dancing with, s'long's you're dancing."

This last came one evening as a variant in the usual formula. It
startled Chug a little, so that he held the girl off the better to look
at her. She was Wanda something-or-other, and anybody but Chug would
have been alive to the fact that she had been stalking him for weeks
with a stolid persistence.

"Danced with you three times to-night, haven't I?" he demanded. He was
rather surprised to find that this was so.

"Wisht it was thirty."

That was Wanda. Her very eagerness foiled her. She cheapened herself.
When Chug said, "Can I see you home?" he knew the answer before he put
the question. Too easy to get along with, Wanda. Always there ahead of
time, waiting, when you made a date with her. Too ready to forgive you
when you failed to show up. Telephoned you when you were busy. Didn't
give a fellow a chance to come half way, but went seven eighths of it
herself. An ignorant, kindly, dangerous girl, with the physical
development of a woman and the mind of a child. There were dozens like
her in Chippewa.

If the girls of his own class noticed him at all it was the more to
ignore him as a rather grimy mechanic passing briefly before their
vision down Outagamie Street on his way to and from dinner. He was shy
of them. They had a middle-class primness which forbade their making
advances even had they been so inclined. Chug would no more have scraped
acquaintance with them than he would have tried to flirt with Angie
Hatton, Old Man Hatton's daughter, and the richest girl in Chippewa--so
rich that she drove her own car with the chauffeur stuck up behind.

You didn't have to worry about Wanda and her kind. There they were, take
them or leave them. They expected you to squeeze their waist when you
danced with them, and so you did. You didn't have to think about what
you were going to say to them.

Mrs. Scaritt suspected in a vague sort of way that Chug was "running
with the hired girls." The thought distressed her. She was too smart a
woman to nag him about it. She tried diplomacy.

"Why don't you bring some young folks home to eat, Chug? I like to fuss
around for company." She was a wonderful cook, Mrs. Scaritt, and liked
to display her skill.

"Who is there to bring?"

"The boys and girls you go around with. Who is it you're always fixing
up for, evenings?"

"Nobody."

Mrs. Scaritt tried another tack.

"I s'pose this house isn