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 college prom grown old and ugly and gross and rather ridiculous—"The grinning cadaver of a really good time," he remarked once—but it continued to amuse him, rather than to sicken and pall upon him as Yvonne had feared that, with repetition, it might.

To be sure, there were things about it that he found annoying. The way men stared at Yvonne, for example. With eyes that fairly drooled. And the way they laid familiar hands on her arm or her shoulder in passing and praised her singing, or begged her to dance with them. These things were particularly annoying because nothing could be done about them. Jock spasmodically expressed a burning desire to "smash their mucker faces for 'em," and was forever breaking off in the midst of sentences to glower at some near-by table and to growl, sotto voce, "Pull your necks in, damn you!" But further than this he did not go, realizing that his hands were tied by the subservience of his position; and in time he became so accustomed to such trifling indignities that they ceased altogether to affect him.

And then, the women. "The fool females," to use the mildest of Jock's long list of invectives. They lavished upon the good-looking young banjo player constant and most unwelcome attentions. They broke into languishing smirks whenever he inadvertently gazed in their direction. They converted the waiters into messengers and dispatched them to his table with invitations to join their various parties. Or they sent their escorts to try to exchange dances with him, Or sometimes, if they were sufficiently intoxicated, they came themselves. . . . One night a girl, a little Jewess with startling orange lips in a chalk-white face, swayed unsteadily up to him as he and Yvonne were leaving the floor and threw her arms about his neck and called