“Yes, I guess so!” her neighbor derisively replied. “Pity ’bout you! Us girls are on to you, Miss Adair! The fellers’d tumble for you if you didn’t jack ’em up!” “Fiddlesticks! But I won’t have anyone calling for me; puts you under obligations,” said Cis impatiently. “You said a mouthful!” the girl endorsed her, then added significantly: “I got one comin’ after me, but I don’t get off till one, Q. T. Dang’rous goin’ alone at that littlest hour!” The girl laughed and Cis looked disgusted, drawing away with a slight, involuntary movement before she recalled herself. Then she said: “One is a lot later than ten, more than the four hours later. Glad you’ve someone to see you safe, Mimi.” Cicely turned back to her switchboard, refusing to share the humor of Mimi’s being escorted home, and as she did so she received a call. “I’d like to get 12, the Boulevard, if you please,” a voice said. Cicely said sharply: “_What_ number did you say?” She recognized the voice and the peculiar form of its call. It was the oily, yet sub-acid voice which Cis had said was like maple syrup beginning to ferment, the voice which she distrusted, the voice of sweet Jeanette Lucas’ betrothed, to whom her marriage was imminent. “What number did you say?” Cicely therefore said sharply; could he have possibly mistaken his call? Parkway 58 was the Lucas call, and this, Boulevard 12--Why, in the name of all that was good and loyal was this Herbert Dale calling Boulevard 12? “I’d like to get 12, the Boulevard,” repeated the suave voice, this time with its sub-acid quality less submerged. Cicely plugged-in for the required number, but her wits were working quickly, her warm heart was beating fast, sending the blood up to her bright hair with a generous, pitying indignation for the girl whom she admired at a distance, whom she had set up in a sort of shrine as the ideal maiden. Cicely was not in the habit of indulging curiosity by “listening in”; indeed, she felt little curiosity as to other people’s affairs, but now what she felt was not curiosity, but a burning sympathy for that other girl. Therefore she listened in. Only a few moments did she listen to the conversation between Herbert Dale, on one end of the wire, and someone at Boulevard 12 on the other. She heard enough to satisfy her that her favorite theory of voices being indicative had a solid foundation in fact. She jerked herself away from her eavesdropping, let her hands fall into her lap, nervously twisting her fingers, her head bowed as she rapidly examined herself as to what she meant to do about it. “For the love of Pete, Cis Adair, your face’s redder’n your hair; you’re _all_ red! You listened in! What’s up?” cried her neighbor, putting out her hand to follow Cicely’s example. “Keep off! It’s my business!” ordered Cicely sharply, and the girl thought it better to abandon her plan, warned by the flash in Cis’s eyes.