Even through the confusion of her own ideas and plans, and the need for constant verbal self-defense against the encroaching familiarity of her companion, the notion flitted across Sylvia's mind that probably Eleanor was thinking of the young assistant in chemistry. How queer and topsy-turvy everything was, she reflected, as she bandied lively words with the lively young man at her side, continuing to eat his candies, although their rich, cloying taste had already palled on her palate--here was Mrs. Hubert throwing Eleanor at Jerry's head, when what Eleanor wanted was that queer, rough-neck freak of an assistant prof; and here were Jerry's parents making such overtures to Sylvia, when what _she_ wanted--she didn't know what she did want. Yes, she did, she wanted a good time, which was somehow paradoxically hard to attain. Something always kept spoiling it,--half the time something intangible inside her own mind. She gave the candy-box a petulant push. "Oh, take it away!" she said impatiently; "I've eaten so many now, it makes me sick to look at them!" The donor showed no resentment at this ingratitude, holding the box on his knees, continuing to help himself to its contents with unabated zest, and to keep the conversation up to concert pitch: "--the only girl I ever saw who'd stop eating Alligretti's while there was one left--another proof that there's only one of you--I said right off, that any co-ed that Jerry Fiske would take to must be a unique specimen--" He did not further specify the period to which he referred by his "right off," but the phrase gave Sylvia a tingling, uncomfortable sense of having been for some time the subject of speculation in circles of which she knew nothing. They were near Mercerton now, and as she gathered her wraps together she found that she was bracing herself as for an ordeal of some sort. The big car stopped, a little way out of town, in front of a long driveway bordered with maple-trees; she and the young man descended from one end-platform and Eleanor Hubert from the other, into the midst of loud and facetious greetings from the young people who had come down to meet them. Jerry was there, very stalwart, his white sweater stretched over his broad chest. All the party carried skates, which flashed like silver in the keen winter sun. They explained with many exclamations that they had been out on the ice, which was, so the three new-comers were assured many times, "perfectly grand, perfectly dandy, simply elegant!" A big, many-seated sled came jingling down the driveway now, driven by no less a personage than Colonel Fiske himself, wrapped in a fur-lined coat, his big mustache white against the red of his strongly marked old face. With many screams and shouts the young people got themselves into this vehicle, the Colonel calling out in a masterful roar above the din, "Miss Marshall's to come up here with me!"