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 think he's perfectly peachy wonderful—just as a boy in college, I mean of course. I went down to both the games he played in before he broke his collarbone; but of course I'm not wildly collegiate; Charlie's peachy in his own place, I mean! I never dreamed I'd meet a cousin of his this afternoon." Here she looked wistfully for one second into Walter's eyes; then, with an air of mockery, tapped his arm with the tips of her fingers. "And such a cousin!"

"She's a terrific little belle, I'm afraid," her father said to Claire. "She has a squadron of boys hanging about and seems to spare no one. She tells me she prefers 'older men,' and I suppose she means young gentlemen about as old as the one she's proceeding to enthrall just now. I haven't a doubt she'll annex him before she leaves his side and will probably tell me, after we go out, that she has an engagement with him for the evening. She'll break several previous ones, incidentally, but she'll patch all that up later somehow. I'm sure I don't know how she does it."

Claire thoroughly knew how Kitty did it; and she shivered slightly, remembering how she herself had done it. "There, but for the grace of God in making me almost twenty-five, walk I!" she thought; and then hearing what Kitty said next, she was startled.