never quite recover
what you lose by going to these little freshwater colleges. You never
quite get the jay out of your system."

The obvious reply to this was that in his case it had not mattered, for
patently he did not even remotely suggest the state or condition of
jayness; but Mrs. Holton ignored the opportunity to appease his vanity.

"Oh!"

Phil's "Oh" was ambiguous enough; but her mother's was even more
baffling.

"Of course, we all love Madison," he hastened to add; "but I'm around a
good deal, here and there over the country, and when I meet Yale and
Harvard men I always feel that I have missed something; there is a
difference."

"Clothes--neckties?" suggested Mrs. Holton.

"It's a little deeper than that."

"Knack of ordering a dinner?"

"Oh, you're putting me in a corner! I'd never thought it all out; but
I've always felt a difference. If I'm wrong, there's nobody I'd rather
have set me right than you."

Her laugh was enthralling. She had no intention of committing herself on
the relative advantages of big and little colleges.

"Let me see, Mr. Holton, your business is--"

"Oh, I'm a broker in investment securities; that's the way they have me
down in the Indianapolis Directory."

"You advise people what to do with their money and that sort of thing?
It's very responsible, I should think, and it must be wearing."

Her face reflected the gravity associated with the delicate matter of
investments. For a woman whose two matrimonial adventures had left her a
stranded dependent she carried this off well, and she could play a part;
and he liked people who could carry a part gracefully. She turned so
that the firelight fell upon her face and raised a fan to shield her
cheek from the heat. Her use of her hands charmed him. He could not
recall a more graceful woman in all his acquaintance. He added trim
ankles and a discriminating taste in silk hose to his itemized
appraisement of her attractions.

"If a poor lone woman should come to you with a confession that she
owned, say, fifty to a hundred thousand dollars' worth of Government
3's, what would you advise her to do with them?"

It was as though she spoke of poetry or the moonlit sea. "Fifty or a
hundred!" She could as easily have spoken of a chest of Spanish
doubloons, or some other monetary unit of romance. He was flattered that
she was taking so much pains with him; a woman who was so fair to look
upon might amuse herself at his expense as