* * * * *

A September afternoon. The sixteen-year-old Carl was tipped back in a
chair at Eddie Klemm's, one foot on a rung, while he discussed village
scandals and told outrageous stories with Eddie Klemm, a brisk
money-maker and vulgarian aged twenty-three, who wore a "fancy vest"
and celluloid buttons on his lapels. Ben Rusk hesitatingly poked his
head through the door.

Eddie Klemm called, with business-like cordiality: "H'lo, Fatty! Come
in. How's your good health? Haven't reformed, have you? Going to join
us rough-necks? Come on; I'll teach you to play pool. Won't cost you a
cent."

"No, I guess I hadn't better. I was just looking for Carl."

"Well, well, Fatty, ain't we ree-fined! Why do we guess we hadn't to
probably maybe oughtn't to had better?"

"Oh, I don't know. Some day I'll learn, I guess," sighed Fatty Ben
Rusk, who knew perfectly that with a doctor father, a religious
mother, and an effeminate taste for reading he could never be a town
sport.

"Hey! watch out!" shrieked Eddie.

"Wh-what's the matter?" gasped Fatty.

"The floor 's falling on you!"

"Th--th----Aw, say, you're kidding me," said Fatty, weakly, with a
propitiating smile.

"Don't worry, son; you're the third guy to-day that I've caught on
that! Stick around, son, and sit in any time, and I'll learn you some
pool. You got just the right build for a champ player. Have a
cigarette?"

The social amenities whereby Joralemon prepares her youth for the
graces of life having been recognized, Fatty Rusk hitched a chair
beside Carl, and muttered:

"Say, Carl, here's what I wanted to tell you: I was just up to the
Cowleses' to take back a French grammar I borrowed to look at----Maybe
that ain't a hard-looking language! What d'you think? Mrs. Cowles told
me Gertie is expected back to-morrow."

"Gee whiz! I thought she was going to stay in New York for two years!
And she's only been gone six months."

"I guess Mrs. Cowles is kind of lonely without her," Ben mooned.

"So now you'll be all nice and in love with Gertie again, heh? It
certainly gets me why you want to fall in love, Fatty, when you could
go hunting."

"If you'd read about King Arthur and Galahad and all them instead of
reading the _Scientific American_, and about these fool horseless
carriages and stuff----There never will be any practical use for
horseless carriages, anyway."

"There will----" growled Carl.

"My mother says she don't believe