l
right. But if a girl smokes just to--to appear startling and make men
look at her, then it's all wrong!"

Peggy kissed her.

"Joan, dear," she said, "you've the most amazing intelligence in that
small head that I ever met. Hum. If I'm not mistaken that's Kenny at
the door. He never stops ringing until he's sure you know he's there."

Joan raced away to change her dress.

With excitement in her cheeks and eyes she was extraordinarily lovely.
Kenny with difficulty kept his feet firmly upon the floor a yard away
from her. Peggy laughed up at him, her piquant face impudent and
understanding.

"Kenny," she said under her breath, "I suppose you know you're in love
with your ward?"

Kenny had had his flare with Peggy; and he had come out of it with
wounded vanity, somewhat baffled at Peggy's professed belief in the
transiency of feminine love. After all, Peggy said pensively, she knew
too many charming men to promise an indeterminate interval of
concentration upon one. Kenny deemed such a viewpoint heretical and
masculine; women were meant to be faithful.

Now he stared at the girl's saucy face with a startled flush.

"Peggy!" he said, "you little wretch!"

It was growing harder day by day to keep his love a secret.

Joan's first dance at the Holbein Club brought a train of complications.

Ann, interpretative, dressed her in snow-white tulle with here and
there a glint of silver. The soft full skirt floated out above her
silver slippers like a cloud, but little whiter than her throat and
arms. Peggy and Ann never told the tale of her rebellion or her
frantic wail:

"Oh, Peggy, Peggy! I can't go. They forgot the sleeves."

She came down the stairway like a flower, but her eyes were wistful and
troubled.

"Kenny, should I?"

"Should you what, dear?"

"Dance when--when Uncle--"

"If your heart is glad and your feet want to dance, mavourneen," said
Kenny gently, "then no conventional pretense of mourning shall stop
them. You were kind and merciful while he lived. Even he, dear, would
not ask more."

"If my Victrola arm has been winding in vain while you two practiced
half the floor off the studio," put in Ann, "I shall be offended. I
dreamed last night that I was an organ-grinder teaching Sid to dance."

Joan laughed and kissed her.

The Holbein Club accepted her with a hum of delight.

"She _is_ beautiful!" said Jan.

"Beautiful, of course," said Somebody. "Any girl in Kenny's life w