Flora, rather freckly, elbowy, and far too tall, was none the less about to be pretty. She was frailly fair, like her mother, and could already throw her blue eyes about their balls, in the Esperanto of coquetry. She had a treacherous little faculty of appearing never to study and yet maintaining an excellent grade of scholarship. "You get me to do all sorts of things with you, Flora, and then you sneak off and study on the quiet and leave me to flunk because I promised you I wouldn't study, either." "Why, Lilly Becker, I never studied one minute for that algebra quiz." "You did so! When I went downstairs to write in my Friendship Book, like you said you were going to do, you worked your algebra instead. Roy told me." "Well, if I was as pretty as you, Lilly, I wouldn't ever care if I got my lessons or not," said Flora, to palliate. "Flora Kemble, I'm not pretty!" "You are, too. Everybody says your complexion is like peaches and cream, and look at mine, all freckles." "Complexion, huh! If I had your yellow hair, you could have all my complexion." "Boys hate freckles because so many of them have them themselves." "Always boys. Honestly, you're boy-crazy, Flora." "Well, I like that. Can I help it if I got an invitation and you didn't? You sat right next to him in English and I sat two whole seats away." A cloud no larger and smudgier than a high-school boy's hand had dropped its first shadow between them. Eugene Bankhead, son of the credit man for Slocum-Hines, the city's largest wholesale hardware firm, had suddenly, out of this clear sky, invited Flora to the Thanksgiving Day football game between Center High and an exclusive local academy. A new estate felt, rather than spoken, quickened the eye and authority of Flora. A sense of it rode on the air waves between them. "I hate boys." "How do you know? You've never seen any except my brother and sneak-thief Harry." "Papa says if a girl begins to run around with boys too soon it makes her so forward that by the time she's eighteen she's too old and faded--" "That's old-fogy talk." "You mean it's old fogy for girls to let boys jam everything else out of their heads. I'd like to see the boy that could make me forget my--my ambitions." "If Eugene had asked you instead of me you wouldn't be saying that." "Anyway, I hate snips. I like men--real men." "Oh, I know. You're stuck on Lindsley!" A violent splash of red and a highly superlative denial of word and manner laid hold of Lilly. "Why, Flora Kemble!" "Look at her blushing. Oh, what I know about you!" "You fibber. I think he's the limit. I never saw a fellow so stuck on himself." "Oh, I know! I know now why you carry home twice as many books as you used to since he got charge of the library." "I'm reading the _Lady of the Lake_ and you know it. That's why I stopped in to-night." "I know why you're always writing compositions since you have him in English. Lilly's stuck on Lindsley."