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 decided what we'd like it to be. Having no influence in heaven, and none whatever over you, we suspect that in all probability it will be something quite different. Do sit down, darling, you make me nervous. A grin at that height is too remindful of a gargoyle on a roof."

Jock and Saunders Lincoln laughed together, and Jock bent to move the little slippered feet to the side of the footstool, seating himself by them. "Well, I," he declared, "have spent this New Year's day elaborately and painstakingly mapping out the future of a beautiful young lady!"

"Coincident with your own, of course," said his mother dryly.

"Bum guess. The beautiful young lady was not Yvonne."

Mrs. Hamill's eyes widened, and Lincoln said, "Why, I'd been led to believe that Yvonne was the only really beautiful young lady now extant!"

"She is," Jock assured them, sobering. "This one's just an infant. Cecily Graves, from East Orange. I met her once at college, and last night she showed up at the Tavern, and—well, there's quite a yarn. Want to listen?"

"Yes," cried Mrs. Hamill with enthusiasm.

Leaning forward, his arms on his knees and a forgotten cigarette consuming itself in his fingers, Jock outlined the history of Cecily as he knew it. His hearers seemed to find it extremely interesting. They neither moved nor spoke, and he, absorbed in what he said, did not realize that they were more absorbed in the way in which he said it—in the inflections of his voice and the unconscious buoyancy of his expression. He failed to note how often their glances met across the top of his head, and how once, after a descriptive passage employing countless superlatives, Mrs. Hamill's