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 to me you've fussed around with everybody but Columbus!"

"But my affairs are all harmless, Hazel," I remind her.

"Blah!" retorts my charming chum—and conversation lagged a bit.

Jerry and Pete told me that they hadn't yet convinced Mr. Daft that they were Grade-A actors, but they said they had great hopes now that I was in their midst. Pete kidded Jerry about winning the heart of his mother's hired girl, Bee Swenson, who Pete declared had a face like a jig-saw puzzle with the important key-pieces missing. This joshing seemed to greatly disturb the huge Jerry and he told me confidentially that if Bee was the last woman in the world and he was the last man, he'd take arsenic before he'd marry her! Both Pete and Jerry spoke affectionately of the farm's hard cider, which they swore had drug store gin and Long Island Scotch beaten forty ways for smoothness and potency. They said this stuff was the real McCoy and that Prohibition meant nothing in the life of a farmer—except that he helped put it over. Both of my boy friends seemed to have managed to get on the most intimate terms with Mr. Cider, particularly Peter.

"I didn't come back home a minute too soon, kid," he confides to me, swaying dizzily on the wagon seat.