knees this year, anyway. Car come round?"

"Long ago," said Billy, and Elinor, reaching for her own wrap,
declared herself ready. "I wish you were going, Rachael," the girl
added as she turned to follow their guest from the room.

"Come back here a moment, Bill," Mrs. Breckenridge said casually,
seating herself at the dressing-table without a glance at her
stepdaughter. For a moment Miss Breckenridge stood irresolute in
the doorway, then she reluctantly came in.

"You're just seventeen, Billy," said the older woman
indifferently. "When you're eighteen, next March, I suppose you
may do as you please. But until then--either see a little less of
Joe Pickering, or else come right out in the open about it, and
tell your father you want to see him here. This silly business of
telephoning and writing and meeting him, here, there, and
everywhere, has got to stop."

Billy stared steadily at her stepmother, her breath coming quick
and high, her cheeks red.

"Who said I met him--places?" she said, in a seventeen-year-old-
girl's idea of a tragic tone. Mrs. Breckenridge's answer to this
was a shrug, a smile, and a motherly request not to be a fool.

There was silence for a moment. Then Billy said recklessly:

"I like him. And you can't make me deny it!"