Not that Maxine had even noticed his presence. Why should she with every boy in Brailsford Junction running after her? She had simply swept by in her smart tailored suit and velvet hat exhaling the very faint odor of violets. It was not quite nice to use violet perfume in Brailsford Junction in 1913. It gave Maxine an air of sin and secrecy. Peter felt a trifle heady watching her disappear into the forbidden realm marked WOMEN from whence came the concerted giggles, shrieks, and titterings of a dozen high-school girls. Peter yanked viciously at his two-inch starched collar, polished the bright yellow toes of his bulldog oxfords with his handkerchief, kicked and stamped to straighten the legs of his peg trousers which had an embarrassing manner of working up the calves of his legs exposing a vast expanse of green polka-dot socks to say nothing of the clips of his garters. He hummed through the tenor part to "When It's Apple-Blossom Time in Normandy," corrected a few minor errors in his harmony, then with the determination of a martyr entering the arena left the comparative safety of the coatroom and strode manfully into the bedlam of the church basement where whole flocks of chickens were being devoured by the famished Methodists. Maxine Larabee! So that was what had been troubling him! But a fine chance he had with any girl as swell as Maxine. Particularly now that he had quit school. Why, even the college guys serenaded her; so did rich Bud Spillman the football hero and bully. She had more picture postcards and sofa pillows and fraternity pennants than any girl in Rock County. She had about twelve different dresses and six or seven hats, and a hat-pin which was supposed to have a real ruby set in the head of it. A fine chance he had with Maxine! Peter was so absorbed in this new and disastrous turn of events that he failed to answer the greetings and friendly gibes with which he was met as he elbowed his way to the ticket table, purchased for thirty-five cents a frayed rectangle of cardboard, and finding a vacant seat, set to like the good young trencherman he was. He scarcely noticed when Mrs. Fulton whisked away his empty plate and returned plump, red, and beaming with a second helping, and he was half way through his pumpkin pie loaded with whipped cream before he noticed that something cataclysmic and world-shaking was about to occur. Maxine Larabee was taking the chair beside him. "Gee, you're a regular swell tonight," the blond vision of loveliness crowned with a coronet braid murmured sotto voce to the embarrassed boy beside her. She looked approvingly at the green polka-dot tie which matched the socks, the black curls slicked down on either side of the central part. "Why don't you take me down to the ice-cream parlor and buy me a lover's delight sometime?" "Me?" Peter asked, astonished. "Me take you right down to the ice-cream parlor and buy you an ice-cream sundae?"