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 though you are. For I have learned that you are one of the most popular young men at college, you could not hope to contract a marriage with one of my girls, however friendly you might become with one of them."

"Was it for this," Bennet asked, calmly, "that you asked me here?"

Miss Gregory's face turned pink as she bowed her head in acknowledgment. As he spoke, Bennet's mind flashed to a paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, which he had learned at school. "All men are endowed with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

At her acquiescence, Bennet sat back in his chair as he said:

"Miss Gregory, from a study of the Mayflower band's history, the history of other colonists, and early settlers, it would seem that there is much in the life of these that might be left buried in the coffins of the past. There are things in their lives of which present day descendants don't care to boast. To rattle the dry bones of ancestry may not be the wisest act for some of us. So far as heritage is concerned, I can boast of as much as they. Perhaps more. I have as good breeding behind me as the best, my family mey not be as wealthy but it certainly has as good training as any in America. I have been as carefully and as well reared. So I don't see how the things you mention concern me."

"Yes, my dear boy, but you don't understand."

"I understand enough to know that a lady has invited