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 a perfect nitwit and persists in leading from the ace, despite my frenzied and perpetual protestations." She seated herself on the edge of the bed, took one of Jock's cigarettes and smoked it thoughtfully. "What's on your mind, Jocky?"

"Nothing."

"Nonsense! I knew there was something, the minute you came into the room."

Jock remained silent, and Mrs. Hamill, after a long glance at him, concluded that she must by indirections find directions out. "Have a good time at the dance?"

"Wonderful."

"How's Molly?"

"All right, I guess. She went home about ten o'clock." Jock's voice was noncommittal, but to his mother, who knew him very much better than mothers usually know their twenty-two-year-old sons, he told volumes.

"Who was there," she inquired.

"The usual mob. And—and a girl from New York."

Mrs. Hamill was quietly triumphant. "Oh, so Molly went home at ten o'clock and there was a girl from New York!" She shook her head reprovingly. "Jock dear, must I remind you that ninety-nine per cent of this world's hapless husbands are gentlemen who permitted themselves inadvertently to be caught on the rebound?"

"I'm not 'caught'," Jock protested, but without conviction.

"What's her name?"

"Yvonne Mountford."

Between Mrs. Hamill's eyes there appeared a wrinkle—promptly erased, because wrinkles are vicious things with a tendency to stay where they're put. "That name