Jerry stopped humming. “If only this hadn’t happened at the time of the police-strike. But what can those Home Guard birds do?” “It may not have to come to that,” said Jim. They veered away from the city outskirts, and started pounding down the State Road towards the South Shore. It was cold, and the boys in front drove with sullen swiftness. “I feel somehow—as if this were the end of the world,” said Joy miserably. Such awful things are happening that the world’s just got to topple over sometime—and to-night feels just like it.” “I wonder what _is_ going to happen to the world,” said Jim. “Every year since I can remember people have been saying we’ve been going from bad to worse, and I used to think they were old fogies; but I can see the descent myself, it’s getting so rapid—and I can’t be an old fogy—not at twenty-four.” “Funny how we’ve all gone back on the way we used to feel during the war,” said Jerry. “It’s just as if the world had turned a double back somersault.” “Everyone admits that the world is turning around too fast, and that everyone’s got their eyes turned in upon themselves too hard, but then they go right on,” said Joy somewhat pointedly. The memory of Jerry’s evident reluctance to leave the music was still repugnant. The three lapsed into a silence supported by the sucking gasps of the tires as they slid along over the well oiled highway. After fifteen minutes had passed in quiet travel, their progress became slower, the boys in front casting uncertain eyes up each side road they passed. “What’s wrong?” Jim called to them. “Why—I’ve forgotten just where we turn,” Crawf responded. “Sal pointed out the way last night—we’d never been down before, you know——” Dum-Dum put on the brakes and came to a stop. There was a lone man wandering along the road, coming into the spotlight with which the front lamps were cleaving ahead. “Where do you turn off to get to the Toast and Jam?” The wayfarer jerked his thumb. “Next to your right, an’ straight through the cross roads. But you won’t find no toast nor no jam there!” The echoes of his cackling appreciation of his own wit followed them even through the cross roads. The “Toast and Jam” proved to be a large, rambling white farmhouse, nestled on a hill, with a dense thicket of automobiles flanking the barn. Riotous music surged from the windows, and a man’s loud voice singing. “You girls stay out here,” said Jim, “Mr. Barnes will stay with you.” “Not a prayer!” Jerry cried, leaping out. “I want to ask a few little questions myself. If I don’t look in on this, what was the sense of my cutting the dance?” “True,” said Jim, and met Joy’s eyes for a moment as he helped her descend. Jerry had joined the two boys, and Joy and Jim brought up the rear. “It’s just that if you saw anyone you knew here, they’d wonder what you were doing in a place like this,” Jim said suddenly.