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 heard his pleasant lively voice in the outer office, before he pushed open his father's door, she knew it was his.

He was tall and brown, tanned from long afternoons on the Charles River. She knew so much about him that at the moment she saw him she recognized how he had become so brown that his skin was darker than his hair. How white were his teeth as his lips parted in his pleasant half-apologetic let-bygones-be-bygones smile at his father. How blue and clear and lively were his eyes.

"Come in, Justin," said his father, with the same tone of challenge with which he dictated. Justin was Jay's given name, which only his father used. "You received my letter of the seventh?"

"I think so," replied Jay.

"You think so!"

"You don't expect me to remember letters by dates, do you, father? You don't suppose the date is the most impressive part of a letter from you? Now if you'd just mention a part of your opinion of me at the time . . ." He gazed at Ellen and asked, "You're E P, aren't you?"

"What," his father inquired.

Of course Ellen understood: he meant, was she the EP of the symbol JR/EP on the letters she typed?

"This is Miss Powell, Justin," said Mr. Rountree.

"Do you remember," Jay asked her, "was his favor to me of the seventh a sort of superspecial rip-snorter?"

"Rip-snorter!" ejaculated his father.

"If it was," said Jay, "I got it and sort of started to read it—but didn't finish it, father. You know," he continued agreeably and equally to Ellen and his father, "a letter like that is great to get before a sprint race. You