irt-begrimed baseball pants, takes an attitude of
careless grace and misses the next play.

Our grand-stand seats almost two thousand, counting the boxes. But only
the snobs, and the girls with new hats, sit in the boxes. Box seats are
comfortable, it is true, and they cost only an additional ten cents, but
we have come to consider them undemocratic, and unworthy of true fans.
Mrs. Freddy Van Dyne, who spends her winters in Egypt and her summers at
the ball park, comes out to the game every afternoon in her automobile,
but she never occupies a box seat; so why should we? She perches up in
the grand-stand with the rest of the enthusiasts, and when Kelly puts one
over she stands up and clinches her fists, and waves her arms and shouts
with the best of 'em. She has even been known to cry, "Good eye! Good
eye!" when things were at fever heat. The only really blase individual
in the ball park is Willie Grimes, who peddles ice-cream cones. For that
matter, I once saw Willie turn a languid head to pipe, in his thin voice,
"Give 'em a dark one, Dutch! Give 'em a dark one!"

Well, that will do for the firsh dash of local color. Now for the story.

Ivy Keller came home June nineteenth from Miss Shont's select school for
young ladies. By June twenty-first she was bored limp. You could hardly
see the plaits of her white tailored shirtwaist for fraternity pins and
secret society emblems, and her bedroom was ablaze with college banners
and pennants to such an extent that the maid gave notice every
Thursday--which was upstairs cleaning day.

For two weeks after her return Ivy spent most of her time writing letters
and waiting for them, and reading the classics on the front porch,
dressed in a middy blouse and a blue skirt, with her hair done in a curly
Greek effect like the girls on the covers of the Ladies' Magazine. She
posed against the canvas bosom of the porch chair with one foot under
her, the other swinging free, showing a tempting thing in beaded slipper,
silk stocking, and what the story writers call "slim ankle."

On the second Saturday after her return her father came home for dinner
at noon, found her deep in Volume Two of "Les Miserables."

"Whew! This is a scorcher!" he exclaimed, and dropped down on a wicker
chair next to Ivy. Ivy looked at her father with languid interest, and
smiled a daughterly smile. Ivy's father was an insurance man, alderman
of his ward, president of the Civic Improvement club,