eeing Barry in
May!

But fate, which has strange things in store for all of us, had this in
store for little Leila, that she was not to see Barry in May, and the
reason that she was not to see him was Jerry Tuckerman.

Meeting Mary in the street one day early in February, Jerry had said,
"I am going to run over to London this week. Shall I take your best to
Barry?"

Mary's eyes had met his squarely. "Be sure you take _your_ best,
Jerry," she had said.

He had laughed his defiance. "Barry's all right--but you've got to
give him a little rope, Mary."

When he had left her, Mary had walked on slowly, her heart filled with
foreboding. Barry was not like Jerry. Jerry, coarse of fiber, lacking
temperament, would probably come to middle age safely--he would never
be called upon to pay the piper as Barry would for dancing to the tune
of the follies of youth.

She wrote to Gordon, warning him. "Keep Barry busy," she said. "Jerry
told me that he intended to have 'the time of his young life'--and he
will want Barry to share it."

Gordon smiled over the letter. "Poor Mary," he told Constance; "she
has carried Barry for so long on her shoulders, and she can't realize
that he is at last learning to stand alone."

But Constance did not smile. "We never could bear Jerry Tuckerman; he
always made Barry do things."

"Nobody can make me do things when I don't want to do them," said
Gordon comfortably and priggishly, "and Barry must learn that he can't
put the blame on anybody's shoulders but his own."

Constance sighed. She did not quite share Gordon's sense of security.
Barry was different. He was a dear, and trying so hard; but Jerry had
always had some power to sway him from his best, a sinister
inexplicable influence.

Jerry, arriving, hung around Barry for several days, tempting him, like
the villain in the play.

But Barry refused to be tempted. He was busy--and he had just had a
letter from Leila.

"I simply can't run around town with you, Tuckerman," he explained.
"Holding down a job in an office like this isn't like holding down a
government job."

"So they've put your nose to the grindstone?" Jerry grinned as he said
it, and Barry flushed. "I like it, Tuckerman; there's something ahead,
and Gordon has me slated for a promotion."

But what did a promotion mean to Jerry's millions? And Barry was good
company, and anyhow--oh, he couldn't see Ballard doing a steady stunt
like this.

"Motor into