"I play everything I can get my hands on," she returned promptly. CHAPTER II HOT TEA Linda Barry was looking in the glass. She liked her own reflection, and no wonder. She was coolly critical of her own appearance, however, and granted it her approval only when her costume and coiffure reached the standard of her own prescription. Whether any one else criticized her was a matter of profound indifference. She had been known in her class in the University as a good fellow, a good sport, carelessly generous, and confident of her own powers, physical and mental. Emerson says, if you would have friends you must know how to do without them. Linda Barry was a born leader and took her friends for granted. She never went out of her way to make one. That sort of girl always has some enemies, impotently resenting all that she arrogates to herself and that her admirers grant to her. But such clashes as had taken place left no mark on Linda. Triumphant and careless of triumph, she emerged from college life and asked of an obliging world, "What next?" She was looking in the glass now, this Sunday afternoon, because she had been romping with her nephew, aged five, and he had pulled her hat awry. She had dropped in for tea at her sister's apartment by the lake. It was two days after the dinner dance, and she was still feeling high approval of Harriet for the way in which she had managed the whole affair. Bertram King was sitting opposite her now, holding the panting small boy, whose cheeks were red with exertion, and who chuckled with joy at having won a sudden and tempestuous battle by the simple move of jerking his aunt's hat over her eyes. "I beated Aunt Linda. I beated her," he shrieked gayly. "Hush, hush, Harry dear," said his mother from the tea-table. "Aunt Linda lets you get too excited." Aunt Linda, whose very presence was suggestive of intoxicating rough and tumble to her nephew, winked and nodded at him from the glass. "I'll catch you alone some day," she said, with a significance which filled him with ecstatic terror. He jumped up and down in the encircling arms. "No, you won't, no, you won't!" he shouted. "Uncle Bertram won't let you." The child's active arms caught the ribbon that held his protector's eyeglasses, and jerked them from his nose. "Now, Linda, Linda," protested the mother, looking proudly at the lusty youngster, whose rumpled hair and floating tie-ends told of the bout just finished. "Listen, Harry, there's father coming. If I let you take him his tea, will you be very careful?" Linda, rehabilitated, turned from the mirror and seated herself near the window. "Let him bring me _my_ tea," she said, gazing at the child with eyes that set him again to effervescing with delicious apprehension. "No, _no_, she'll grab me!" yelled the boy, on a yet higher pitch of joy. "Linda dear, it's Sunday. Let's have a little quiet," pleaded her sister.