ll? Very well then; we'll think. I, myself, will think.
First, I'll have a talk with the sodden amorist. I'll grill him. I'll
find the weak spot in his armor. There must be something we can put over
on him."

"By fair means or foul," insisted Uncle Martin as they paused at the
parting of their ways. "Low-down, underhanded work--do you get what I
mean?"

"I do, I do!" declared young Mr. Evans and broke once more into the
buoyant stride of an earlier moment. This buoyance was interrupted but
once, and briefly, ere he gained the haven of his office.

As he stepped quite too buoyantly into Fountain Square, he was all but
run down by the new six-cylinder roadster of Mrs. Harvey Herrington,
driven by the enthusiastic owner. He regained the curb in time, with a
ready and heartfelt utterance nicely befitting the emergency.

The president of the Whitewater Women's Club, the Municipal League and
the Suffrage Society, brought her toy to a stop fifteen feet beyond her
too agile quarry, with a fine disregard for brakes and tire surfaces.
She beckoned eagerly to him she might have slain. She was a large woman
with an air of graceful but resolute authority; a woman good to look
upon, attired with all deference to the modes of the moment, and
exhaling an agreeable sense of good-will to all.

"Be careful always to look before you start across and you'll never have
to say such things," was her greeting to Mr. Evans, as he halted beside
this minor juggernaut.

"Sorry you heard it," lied the young man readily.

"Such a flexible little car--picks up before one realizes," conceded
Whitewater's acknowledged social dictator. "But what I wanted to say is
this: that poor daft partner of yours has mortally offended every woman
in town except three, with that silly screed of his. I've seen nearly
all of them that count this morning, or they've called me by telephone.
Now, why couldn't he have had the advice of some good, capable woman
before committing himself so rabidly?"

"Who were the three?" queried Mr. Evans.

"Oh, poor Genevieve, of course; she goes without saying. And you'd guess
the other two if you knew them better--his cousin, Alys Brewster-Smith,
and poor Genevieve's Cousin Emelene. They both have his horrible
school-boy composition committed to memory, I do believe.

"Cousin Emelene recited most of it to me with tears in her weak eyes,
and Alys tells me his noble words have made the world seem like a
different place to her.