rs.
Street, however, did not like a gas car without a man to drive it; the son
of the family was in Athens, Mexico, at a coal mine; and Mr. Street, Sr.,
considered that his income did not run to a chauffeur at the present scale
of wage. Therefore, Polly tried to forget her prejudice and to imagine
that the neat little car was a real machine.

Second among her grievances was the fact that this was Bob's wedding day
and she, his adored and adoring sister, was not with him. Bob had been
engaged for some months to a girl in Douglas, Arizona. The date of the
wedding had been set twice and each time difficulties in Mexico had made
it seem unwise either that Bob should leave Athens, where he held the
position of superintendent of one of Fiske, Doane & Co.'s mines, or that
the bride should venture into the disturbed region.

This time they expected, as Bob wrote, to "pull it off on schedule." Polly
had hoped either to go to Douglas for the wedding or to have the bride and
groom in Chicago; but Father had been unable to get away, Mother hadn't
been well, and the trip had been given up. Then the young couple planned
to go immediately to Athens without the formality of a honeymoon. To quote
Bob again: "People go on honeymoons to be lonesome, and if anybody can
find a better place to be lonesome in than Athens, let him trot it out."

The third grievance held an element of publicity particularly galling to a
young lady who was known to her friends not only as a daring horsewoman, a
crack swimmer and a golf champion, but as a bit of a belle besides. She
and Joyce Henderson had agreed a week ago to break their engagement. The
engagement had been a mistake--both young people admitted it frankly to
each other. The irritating part of it was that Joyce was admitting it to
the world.

Instead of taking the matter seriously and considering himself, outwardly
at least, as the victim of an unhappy love affair, Joyce had escorted
another girl, who shall be nameless, for she does not enter this story
except as an element of conflict, to the Mandarin Ball. Now the Mandarin
Ball is not the frivolous affair that its name suggests, but a perennial
of deep importance, a function to which young men are in the habit of
taking their wives, their fiancees, or the girls they rather hope may be
their fiancees. It is one of the few social affairs left of the old
order.

Thus you can see that it was a pointed action on Joyce's part; an
indication that