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 "You don't, and you're not. Don't try to give me that line, young fella, because I know better. You're a poseur. You devote all your ingenuity to making everybody think you're different from what you are. Life's a masquerade to you, and you go wearing a—a clown suit."

"Say!" cried Jock, surprised and alarmed. "Say, why, you're uncanny! How did you guess that? Hardly anyone ever does, unless I tell them."

"I don't know how I guessed it," Peg said. "Call it feminine insight, or whatever you like. Anyway, I knew it as soon as I'd talked to you five minutes. I think I even got wind of it before I ever met you, from things Bones said." She lit a cigarette and added judicially, "Of course Bones doesn't realize it himself, except subconsciously. Bones never realizes anything unless you explain it to him with great care and draw a few little diagrams. He's a dumbbell."

"He's a great guy, though," said Jock.

"One of the greatest," Peg agreed. "I worship him. But he's a dumbbell none the less. I'm a dumbbell too, but not quite such a hopeless one as Bones. I never read, and seldom think, but I've got imagination, which he most decidedly hasn't. And I flatter myself I know a lot about people—boys especially. I ought to, they're the only subject I've ever really studied. Most of them are the same. Cut off the same piece of goods, with the same pattern. But you're not, Jock. You're different. And what I can't understand is, why do you work so hard to cover it up?"

She fastened him with a stern glance. "You make me feel like a beetle squirming on a pin," observed Jock, amused.

"Tell me!"