"Say, how long do you think you're a paid-up subscriber to this little daily speech of mine?... Well, if I've got to hand you another copy, here goes. You promised me, on your word of honor, if George swung around for suffrage, you'd swing around for me. Well, George has come around. Not that I had much to do with it--but he surely did come around! Now, the point is, Miss Betty Sheridan, are you a woman of your promise--are you going to marry me?" "Well, if you try to put it that way, demanding your pound of flesh----" "One hundred and twenty pounds," corrected Penny. "I'll say that, of course, I don't love you, but I guess a promise is a promise--and--and--" And suddenly a pair of strong young arms were flung about the neck of Mr. Penfield Evans. "Oh, I'm so happy, Penny dear!" "Betty!" After that there was a long silence... silence broken only by that softly sibilant detonation which belongs most properly to the month of June, but confines itself to no season... to a long, long silence born of and blessed by the gods... until one Percival Sheridan, coming stealthily home from a late debauch at Humphrey's drug store, and mounting the steps in the tennis sneakers which were his invariable wear on dry and non-state occasions, bumped into the invisible and unhearing couple. "Say, there--" gasped the startled youth, backing away. Betty gave an affrighted cry--it was a long swift journey down from where she had just been. Her right hand, reaching drowningly out, fell upon a familiar shoulder. "It's Pudge!" she cried. "Pudge"--shaking him--"snooping around, listening and trying to spy----" "You stop that--it ain't so!" protested the outraged Pudge, his utterance throttled down somewhat by the chocolate cream in his mouth. "Spying on people! And, besides, you've been stuffing yourself with candy again! You're ruining your stomach with that sticky sweet stuff--you're headed straight for a candy-fiend's grave. Now, you go upstairs and to bed!" She jerked him toward the door, opened it, and as he was thrust through the door Pudge felt something, something warm, press impulsively against a cheek. Not until the door had closed upon him did he realize what Betty had done to him. He stood dazed for a moment--unbalanced between impulses. Then the sturdy maleness of fourteen rewon its dominance. "Guess I know what they was doing, all right--aw, wouldn't it make you sick!" And, in disgust which another chocolate cream alleviated hardly at all, he mounted to his bed. Outside there was again silence... faintly disturbed only by that softly sibilant, almost muted percussion which recalls inevitably the month of June.... THE END