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 ing, to accept now would be an ; he had far too thoroughly imagined it.

He saw how simple it would have been to fit Eric into the modest Thanet scheme. Any nice person would see the humor of his cat-boat bobbing beneath the Aldergrove Yacht Club; any nice person would appreciate the black Artelia's muffins and loquacity, and the lame collie and his mother's old-fashioned notions; any nice person would sense in the Thanet menage something whimsical, something touching, something fragile, something which, though forlorn and rococo, was yet profoundly real. And Eric was, for all the tightness of his mental garb, a nice person.

"Has Rhoda Marple told you," said Eric, "she's coming to the Commencement dance with my mother and sister?"

Grover had a moment of jealousy,—but only a moment, for there was no mistaking the good faith of the hand that was now shaking his shoulder. Moreover he was reminded of a telephone call he had neglected to make this afternoon. Having flatly refused to take part in the Commencement rites and festivities himself, he could not blame Rhoda for accepting another man's invitation, especially a man whom he had made a point of introducing to her. In an unanalyzable sense he was pleased, yet he also felt, however irrationally, that he had been badly used.

As Eric went on talking, Grover pictured the garden parties and the dances, the Chinese lanterns, the straw-