smelly."

"Ellis, will you stop being ridiculous? Dick, why have you hunted that
fox so long?"

Ellis had seen that Terry was not to be pumped, that this was another
of his queer quests. He tried again to shunt Susan away.

"Maybe it was a personal matter between him and the fox, Sue."

She turned on him a look she endeavored to make disdainful, but only
succeeded in raising another laugh from both. But she was not to be
deterred. Her eyes lit with sudden inspiration.

"I'll bet--I'll bet anything--" she began.

"Susan Terry Crofts! Even Dick would not bet on Sunday!"

"I will bet anything," she insisted, "that it is something for
Deane--for Christmas!"

In the slight flush that rose in her brother's face Susan learned
that she had hit the mark. But she was instantly sorry that she had
pressed the issue, as she had learned long before to respect what was
to her his queer reticence.

Ellis hurried into the breach: "Wonder what Bruce will give Deane this
Christmas? He is about due to present her with something really worth
while--like a patent mop!"

Even Terry laughed. The struggle for Deane's favor between Bruce
Ballard and Terry had been in progress nearly ten years and had become
one of the town's institutions. The first formal offerings tendered by
the two boys on the occasion of her graduation from high school
typified the contrasting characters of the rivals: Terry, idealistic,
impressionable, reserved, had sent her a beautiful copy of the "Love
Letters of a Musician," while Bruce, sincere, obvious and practical,
had given her a hat-pin.

On her succeeding birthday Terry, after a six-hour climb, had won for
her a box of trailing arbutus from Mount Defiance's cool top; Bruce
had sent her candy. From his medical college at Baltimore Bruce had
sent, as succeeding Christmas gifts, an ivory toilet set, a thermos
bottle, a reading lamp and a chafing dish.

Terry's offerings on those occasions had been a Japanese kimono
embroidered with her favorite flower--a wondrous thing secured by
correspondence with the American consul at Kobe: a pair of Siamese
kittens which he named Cat-Nip and Cat-Nap: a sandal-wood fan out of
India; and a little, triple-chinned, ebony god of Mirth, its impish
eyes rolled back in merriment, mouth wrinkled with utter joy of the
world.

The rivalry had divided the town into two camps. The pro-Bruce
faction, composed largely of men folk, claimed for their protege a
splendid common s