"I have seen her," George said, shortly. He felt that a challenge had been passed and accepted. He raised his voice. "How about it, Goodhue?" "Coming." Dalrymple opened his mouth as if to speak, but Goodhue slipped into the room, and George and he went down the stairs and climbed into Goodhue's runabout. "I didn't know," George said when they had started, "that you lived with Dalrymple." "We were put together at school, so it seemed simple to start out here." George was glad to fancy a slight colour of apology, as if such a companionship needed a reason. It was a pleasant and intimate little dinner to which they drove. Mr. and Mrs. Alston recollected meeting George at the Baillys', and they were kind about his football. A friend of Betty's from a neighbouring house made the sixth. George was not uncomfortable. His glass had shown him that in a dinner suit he was rather better looking than he had thought. Observation had diminished his dread of social lapses. There flowed, however, rather too much talk of strange worlds, which included some approaching gaieties in New York. "You," Betty said casually to him, "must run up to my great affair." Her aunt, it appeared, would engineer that a short time before the holidays. George was vague. The prospect of a ballroom was terrifying. He had danced very little, and never with the type of women who would throng Betty Alston's debut. Yet he wanted to go. "Betty," her mother said, dryly, "will have all the lions she can trap." George received an unpleasant impression of having been warned. It didn't affect him strongly, because warnings were wasted there; he was too much the slave of a photograph and a few intolerable memories. Sylvia would almost certainly be at that dance. Wandel appeared after dinner. "I tried to get Dolly to come," he said, "but he was in a most villainous temper about something, and couldn't be budged. Don't mind saying he missed a treat. I hired a pert little mare at Marlin's. If I can find anything in town nearly as good I'll break the two to tandem this winter." George's suppressed enthusiasm blazed. "I'd like to help you. I'd give a good deal for a real fight with a horse." He was afraid he had plunged in too fast. He met the surprise of the others by saying he had played here and there with other people's horses; but the conversation had drifted to a congenial topic, and it got to polo. "Because a man was killed here once," Wandel said, "is no reason why the game should be damned forever." "If you young men," Mr. Alston offered, "want to get some ponies down in the spring, or experiment with what I've got, you're welcome to play here all you please, and it might be possible to arrange games with scrub teams from Philadelphia and New York." "Do you play, Mr. Morton?" Betty asked, interestedly. "I've scrubbed around," he said, uncertainly. She laughed. "Then he's a master. That's what he told dear old Squibs about his football."