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 "Oh; the Tryston club!" Jay was listening to his father who, by another door, had returned to the office. Had Ellen Powell completed the call to Mrs. Lytle?

"Tryston is a good, sporty course," he said to Phil Metten. "The best mountain course I know in the South."

"You think, Mrs. Metten and me, we will like it? Nice people go there? You know them?"

"Yes," said Jay. There was his father's voice, phoning to New York while he talked southern golf courses. No matter. His father could not bind him more firmly than already he had bound himself to Lida. "You'll like it. I know the people."

Ellen Powell appeared in the doorway and Jay jumped up. Her eyes lingered on him but she had not come for him; she did not speak to him; she invited Phil Metten, "Will you come in, please?" And she apologized, "Mr. Rountree is very sorry to have kept you waiting."

No harm done from that, Jay thought; for Metten stayed where he was, asking more details about Tryston. Lowry was over his fidgets and was keeping Metten there with Jay, instead of trying to move him on into the office.

"Can you lunch with me?" Metten asked Jay.

"What?"

"I'd like to take you to lunch."

"Oh, thanks," said Jay, "I can't to-day."

"How is to-morrow for you?"

"All right," accepted Jay, absentmindedly, as Lowry jostled him. "That is, if I'm in town."

"We make it to-morrow. Very glad to know you better," said Metten, again grasping Jay's hand before he went with Lowry and Ellen Powell.