But with the arrival of this Edward Hauptwanger, there came a change. For here was a youth of definite and drastic impulses—a beau, a fighter, a fellow of infinite guile where girls of all sorts were concerned—and, too, a youth of taste in the matter of dress and manner—one who stood out as a kind of hero to the type of youthful male companions with whom he chose to associate. Did he not live in a really large, separate house on Grey Street? And were not his father’s coal-pockets and trucks conspicuously labelled outstanding features of the district? And, in addition, Hauptwanger, owing to the foolish and doting favor of his mother (by no means shared by his father), always supplied with pocket money sufficient to meet all required expenditures of such a world as this. The shows to which he could take his “flames”; the restaurants, downtown as well as here. And the boat club on the Little Shark which at once became a rendezvous of his. He had a canoe of his own, so it was said. He was an expert swimmer and diver. He was allowed the use of his father’s car and would often gather up his friends on a Saturday or Sunday and go to the boat club. More interesting still, after nearly a year’s residence here, in which he had had time to establish himself socially after this fashion, he had his first sight of Ida Zobel passing one evening from her home to the store. Her youthful if repressed beauty was at its zenith. And some remarks concerning her and her restricted life by youths who had neither the skill nor the daring to invade it at once set him thinking. She was beautiful, you bet! Hauptwanger, because of a certain adventurous fighting strain in his blood, was at once intrigued by the difficulties which thus so definitely set this girl apart. “These old-fashioned, dictatorial Germans! And not a fellow in the neighborhood to step up and do anything about it! Well, whaddya know?” And forthwith an intensive study of the situation as well as of the sensitive, alluring Ida Zobel. And with the result that he was soon finding himself irresistibly attracted to her. That pretty face! That graceful, rounded figure! Those large, blue-gray, shy and evasive eyes! Yet with yearning in them, too.