ou're 'jolly well fed up' with foreigners
that you like to ape English slang?"

The young man blushed hotly, but he chose to ignore the question with
which she had capped her response. Inasmuch as it was a fair hit, he had
need to ignore it, but his eyes snapped with furious indignation. "Anne,
I don't understand you," he announced in a carefully schooled voice.
"You can play with absurd little dignitaries, or with mountain
illiterates--anything abnormal--but for your own blood--" He paused
there a moment, searching his abundant and sophomoric vocabulary for the
exact combination of withering words; and, while he hesitated, she
interrupted in a tone which was both quiet and ominous:

"Let's take up one thing at a time, Morgan. Just who is the illiterate
in the mountains?"

"You know as well as I do--Boone Wellver."

"Boone Wellver. I thought so. At all events, he's a man, even if he's
not quite twenty-one yet."

"A man: that is to say, a specimen of the _genus homo_. So is the fellow
that brought in the eggs just now. So is the chap that drives the taxi."
The young aristocrat shrugged his shoulders and snapped his fingers in
excellent imitation of Gallic expressiveness; then as Anne's twinkle
reminded him of his being "jolly well fed up with foreigners," the
change in his tone became as abrupt as the break in a boy's altering
voice, and he added: "The point is that he's hardly a gentleman. I
commend his ambition--but there's something in birth as well. Unless you
attach some importance to the elegances and nuances of life, you are
only a member of the mob."

"The elegances of life--as, for instance"--the dancing sparkle stole
mischievously back into the blue eyes and the voice took on a purring
softness--"as, for instance, the handling of the small sword--or fencing
foil?"

Morgan rose petulantly from the table and pushed back his chair. "If you
ladies will excuse me," he announced with superdignity, "I will leave
you for a while to your own devices."

Anne's laughter pursued him in exit with an echo of musical mockery.

But that evening Mrs. Larry Masters posted a letter to Colonel Tom
Wallifarro.

"Morgan has discovered Anne!" she said in part. "He has been too close
to her until now to realize her attractiveness; but she has been noticed
by other men, and at last Morgan is awake. They have quarrelled, and
next to making love that's the most significant of developments. My dear
kinsman and benefactor, you