P. D. Q.

CHAPTER X

Judith Scores Again

The house party at Buck Hill was not proving the great success that
Mildred and Nan had hoped for. All of the elements of pleasure and
gaiety were present but to the anxious hostesses the affair seemed to
drag somewhat. In the first place, brother Jeff utterly refused to
fall in love with their prize guest and the prize guest, being
accustomed to conquest, was peevish in consequence. Not that Jeff was
in the least rude. On the contrary, he was especially polite and
charming to all of his sisters' friends, fetching and carrying for
them, dancing with them, playing tennis with the athletic, talking
sentimental nothings with the romantic, and gravely discussing the
Einstein theory with the high-brows. He did everything that was
required of him but fall in love with Jean Roland.

The young people were gathered at one end of the long piazza. At the
other end sat Miss Ann Peyton and Mrs. Bucknor. Miss Ann was engaged
in her favorite occupation of crocheting thread lamp-mats and Mrs.
Bucknor vainly endeavoring to get to the bottom of the family stocking
basket. The forenoon is always a difficult period in which to
entertain a house party. It seems almost impossible to start anything,
at least so Mildred and Nan felt. Even the most frivolously inclined
do not want to flirt in the morning.

Everybody was feeling a little dull, perhaps from having eaten more
breakfast than is usual in this day and generation, but Buck Hill held
to the custom of olden times of much and varied food with which to
start the day. One can't be very lively after shad roe, liver and
bacon, hot rolls and corn cakes all piled on top of strawberries and
cream, and the whole washed down with coffee.

Jean Roland smothered a yawn, a deliberate yawn--not the kind you
can't repress because the air is close and you feel like a goldfish
when the water in the bowl has not been changed and you must gape for
breath. The fat boy had been dancing attendance on her for the last
hour and she was wearied with his witty sallies. Jeff and Willis
Truman, a former classmate, had started a game of bridge with two of
the more serious-minded girls.

"Bridge is one of the things I can't play," Jean had announced, and
it was hardly complimentary that the game was being played in spite of
her.

"By the way, Jeff, you know the Titian-haired queen you were so taken
up with at the station last evening that you couldn't gr