“Listen to the dear boys!” growled Ralph Atwood. “You know how it runs—‘Where there ain’t no ten commandments and a man can raise a thirst.’ And they’re all front-row Christian Endeavorers and white-ribboners. They think ginger ale is a low-down wicked stuff, ’cause bad men mix highballs with it.”

“Charming!” observed Miss Stark, at the end of the quartet’s first number.

“Not bad—not at all bad,” agreed Dr. Hillary.

The announcer said that Mr. Douglas Raymond would sing a group of songs, and the hostess clapped her hands softly.

Strong, resonant tones poured from the loud-speaker:

“From the desert I come to thee, On my Arab shod with fire—”

“Now just imagine Doug Raymond hitting it in high across the desert on anything shod with fire!” jeered Ralph. “Why, he’d beat the Prince o’ Wales to a flop if he tried to ride a sawhorse. These big romantic yells always give me a pain.”

“Sh—please, Mr. Atwood,” implored the hostess.

Douglas Raymond sang his second song, “It was a Lover and his Lass.”

“There!” declared Ralph, after keeping quiet through two verses, “I’ll say that the boy’s hit his stride; that’s about the kind of stuff for him—Philadelphia cream cheese, with strawberry jam on the side. And did you hear little Dora stub her toe on the piano? She can’t keep her eyes on the music or the keyboard when Doug is singing love songs.”

“Lucky they got chaperones an’ things in the studio!” chuckled Felix McMasters, grinning at Kitty Granby.

“These frightful teases are trying to bother you, Kitty,” said Miss Bascom. “Don’t you mind them at all, dear.”

“I didn’t hear what they said,” lied Kitty bravely.

“Two charming songs, charmingly rendered!” declared Mrs. Tredmore, giving the light-minded youths a glance of lofty disdain.

“Oh, quite!” agreed the new boarder effusively. “You may tell your friend Mr. Raymond, dear Miss Granby, that I got a definite—er—a really authentic spiritual message from his work. Lovely voice!—and real feeling. He has temperament. He should go far. You needn’t hesitate to tell him so, Miss Granby.”

“Oh, thank you, Miss Stark,” said Kitty, blushing vividly, “but Mr. Raymond is—er—why, just a—just one of my friends—here in the boarding house; that’s all.”

“Dear child!” purred Miss Stark, who obviously had reached thirty, “you are so sweetly naïve! I hope you and this agreeable young man with the splendid voice may always remain—oh, very good friends!—and that you may both attain your hearts’ desires. There! You see, I’m in quite a romantic mood as a result of all this perfectly inspiring music. Oh, the radio is priceless! How did we ever live without it!”

“Hope you got all that, Ottilie,” mumbled Ralph to Miss Eldom. “Did you get an aw-thentic click out of Doug’s howls? Me—I’m all lit up on the romantic stuff. Let’s go out on the porch and hold hands. And to think Doug Raymond gets real money for that stuff!”

“Too bad you can’t get real money for making a fool of yourself, Ralph,” said Ottilie. “You’d have more cash than Henry Ford!”

“Click!” gasped Ralph, slapping his jaw. “That registered all right! And to think I offered to kiss you once, out in the wistaria arbor.”

“Don’t mention it; I’ve been trying to forget and forgive. I was disillusioned in love years ago, when you were in kindergarten, young man; and I’m no cradle snatcher.”

“Reckon I’ll say good night, Miss Bascom,” murmured Henry Caddock. “Got some writing to do upstairs, and I’ve got about all the romance I can stand for one evening, I guess.”

Horace Sheldon, next in line of seniority, yawned and decided to stroll down town and supervise the closing of his cigar store for the night.

Lively dance music followed the Orpheus Gleemen’s hour, and the younger boarders rolled up the rugs and spent a half hour in scraping floor wax from the polished boards while Miss Bascom presided and tried to look pleasant and unconcerned.

Kitty Granby refused to dance. She occupied a little warm and stuffy room, top floor rear, and hesitated to go there at once, but she retired moodily to a corner with a magazine and ignored the others.

She was tired, and her nerves were tired. Just as she was thinking that sleep might not come readily to her that night, she nodded over the magazine, and when she sat up with a start, wide awake again, Douglas Raymond was standing in the doorway of the parlor, and the voice of Dora Perkins sounded from the stairs. All the other boarders had gone, and she regretted bitterly that the solitude of the parlor made retreat more difficult.

“Going to the studio in the morning, Mr. Raymond?” Dora was inquiring.

“No, I don’t have to go at all tomorrow,” said Douglas.

“I do. I have to go and rehearse some accompaniments with that fiddler. About ten o’clock. You wouldn’t be walking out that way, I suppose?”

The young man glanced at the shrinking Kitty at the end of the now dimly lighted parlor, and Kitty perceived that his color deepened.

“I—I’d like to—mighty well, Miss Perkins,” he said, “but—I have to—”

“Oh, you don’t have to make excuses!” said Dora quickly with a dry little laugh. “Of course, if you weren’t going anyway! It does seem like an awful walk when you’re alone, though. And you’re such good company, Mr. Raymond. I never gave a thought to the walk either way tonight. Shows what congenial companionship will do for any one.”

“Mighty glad to have had your company, Miss Perkins,” said Douglas in a rather husky voice. “Well—good night, Miss Perkins.”

“Good night, Mr. Raymond. If you just happened to change your mind in the morning, I’ll be leaving about quarter to ten, I guess. Good night.”

“Aren’t you sitting up pretty late, Kitty?” the young man asked, walking slowly the length of the parlor.

“Not so very. I’m going up now, though.”

“That so? I was hoping you might want to sit awhile. Did you hear the program?”

“Yes, we heard it, of course. It was very good.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m pretty tired now, Doug. I guess I’ll say good night.”

“What’s the matter, Kitty?”

“Matter? Nothing the matter with me, I’m sure.”

“Maybe there is with me, then?”

“Oh, don’t be foolish, Doug! I’m terribly tired. Please don’t keep me here talking—about nothing. I’m tired—I’m just good and sick and tired of everything—of this darned old boarding house and this darned old town, and all the horrid, miserable, low-down, good-for-nothing cake-eaters and lounge-lizards round here, and the radio and the movies and the bank—and—and everything that I have to see and hear every gol-darn day of my life.

“There, now I’ve said it—and I’m not saying anything about you—and I don’t care anything about you, and I never did, and never wanted to, and I wouldn’t cry if I never saw your face again. Good night!”

She darted toward the door like an agile kitten, but the dumfounded Douglas literally blundered into her way, checking her flight. He reached out clumsily to take her hand, but she raised the hand and smartly slapped his face.

“Don’t you dare touch me!” she cried furiously. “And you get out of my way and let me go. I don’t find you such good company, Mr. Raymond; I haven’t noticed so much congenial companionship between us!”

“Aw, gee!” muttered Douglas, staring blankly. “Say!—oh, gosh! I don’t know what’s the matter, Kitty, unless—gosh!”

In utter bewilderment he began vaguely to fear the outcome of the sudden tempest, to wonder what was to follow it. After the extraordinary, ungovernable fury, tears and hysterics seemed logical enough, and he dreaded that development no less than any other that he could conjure up in his disordered mind.

There was still a surprise in store for him, however. The tempest cleared, like summer wind and lightning, and was followed by a dead calm—without sunshine.

Kitty sat down abruptly on the nearest chair and stared at him, dry-eyed, with a certain disturbing apathy.

“I’m sorry,” she said evenly. “I’m terribly sorry I made such a fool of myself, and such a scene. I suppose some of them upstairs heard it. I suppose she heard it.”

“But can’t you tell me, Kitty?” he implored miserably. “Gosh!”

“Nothing to tell, Douglas. It’s my nerves, I suppose. I guess I ought to get away from here—everything is so hateful to me.”

“I didn’t know that—er—that I was.”

“Oh, I don’t suppose it’s your fault,” she sighed. “But we—we could never get along, Douglas. I’ve been thinking things over a good deal. I thought I liked you pretty well; you know that, of course; but I’m afraid it was just because you’re such a good-natured, kind sort of a boy. There surely isn’t anything bad about you, but—”

“You’d better go right on,” he said grimly. “I might as well know everything right now.”

“We ought not to let things go any further, Douglas, because we might regret it all our lives. I’m a little bit afraid you’ve never grown up, and that you never will grow up. Seems to me you’re satisfied just to sing a song and have people say that it was fine. I’m terribly afraid you haven’t any ambition, Douglas.”

“Haven’t any ambition?” he gasped. “Ambition! No ambition? Why, Kitty Granby, now I know well enough you’re out o’ your head. There’s not any feller round here with more ambition than I’ve got.”