r of course, and it was natural
enough that she should go on with her typing to the end of a sentence,
or even of a paragraph. But he stayed on and on, and Miss Beach went
steadily on with her typing. Finally he roused himself enough to look
around at her.

"Go ahead and telephone," he said. "I want to find out if I can get a
seat."

She arose obediently and moved over to the switchboard, then began
fumbling with the directory.

"Good lord!" said Rodney. "You know the number of the University Club!"

Of course it was true she did. She called it up for him on an average of
a dozen times a week. He was looking at her now with undisguised
curiosity. She was acting, for a perfectly infallible machine like Miss
Beach, almost queer. But she acted queerer the next moment. She laid
down the directory, clasped her hands tight and pressed her lips
together. Then, without looking around at him, she said:

"You don't want to go to see that show, Mr. Aldrich. It--it isn't good
at all."

Rodney was more nearly amused than he had been in a month.

"You've been to see it?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, and managed to go on a little more naturally, "Mr.
Craig took me. We had a bet on what the Supreme Court's decision would
be in the Roderick case--theater tickets against two pounds of home-made
fudge, and I won. And--that's where we went."

"And you didn't like it, eh?"

"No," she said.

By now he was grinning at her outright. "Vulgar?" he asked.

Her color had mounted again. "Yes," she said.

The notion of having his dramatic entertainment censored by a frail,
prim little thing like Miss Beach tickled his burly sense of humor. "It
would be a horrible thing if I should go to see anything vulgar,
wouldn't it?" he observed. "But I think I'll take a chance. You go ahead
and telephone."

At that she rose and, for the first time, faced him. To his amazement,
he saw that she was in a perfect panic of embarrassment and fright. But,
for some grotesque reason, she was determined, too. She was blushing up
to the hair and her lips were trembling.

"Mr. Aldrich," she said, "you won't like that show. If--if you go,
you'll be sorry."

While he was still staring at her, young Craig came bursting blithely
out of his office, a bundle of papers in his hand and the pucker of a
silent whistle still on his lips. "Oh, Miss Beach!" he said, and then
stopped short, seeing that something had happened.

Rodney tried an experiment. "Craig," h