Expeditiously with frank, non-sentimental fingers Rae Malgregor tore the tough cardboard across, and again across, and once again across, and threw the conglomerate fragments into the waste-basket. And her expression all the time was no more, no less, than the expression of a person who would infinitely rather execute his own pet dog or cat than risk the possible bungling of an outsider. Then like a small child trotting with infinite relief to its own doll-house she trotted over to her bureau, extracted the lace corset-cover, and came back with it in her hand to lean across Zillah Forsyth's shoulder again and watch the men's faces go slipping off into oblivion. Once again, abruptly without warning, she halted the process with a breathless exclamation. "Oh, of course this waist is the only one I've got with ribbons in it," she asserted irrelevantly. "But I'm perfectly willing to trade it for that picture!" she pointed out with unmistakably explicit finger-tip. Chucklingly Zillah Forsyth withdrew the special photograph from its half-completed wrappings. "Oh! Him?" she said. "Oh, that's a chap I met on the train last summer. He's a brakeman or something. He's a--" Perfectly unreluctantly Rae Malgregor dropped the fluff of lace and ribbons into Zillah's lap and reached out with cheerful voraciousness to annex the young man's picture to her somewhat bleak possessions. "Oh, I don't care a rap who he is," she interrupted briskly. "But he's sort of cute-looking, and I've got an empty frame at home just that odd size, and Mother's crazy for a new picture to stick up over the kitchen mantelpiece. She gets so tired of seeing nothing but the faces of people she knows all about." Sharply Zillah Forsyth turned and stared up into the younger girl's face, and found no guile to whet her stare against. "Well of all the ridiculous--unmitigated greenhorns!" she began. "Well--is that all you wanted him for? Why, I supposed you wanted to write to him! Why, I supposed--" For the first time an expression not altogether dollish darkened across Rae Malgregor's garishly juvenile blondeness. "Maybe I'm not quite as green as you think I am!" she flared up stormily. With this sharp flaring-up every single individual pulse in her body seemed to jerk itself suddenly into conscious activity again like the soft, plushy pound-pound-pound of a whole stocking-footed regiment of pain descending single file upon her for her hysterical undoing. "Maybe I've had a good deal more experience than you give me credit for!" she hastened excitedly to explain. "I tell you--I tell you I've been engaged!" she blurted forth with a bitter sort of triumph. With a palpable flicker of interest Zillah Forsyth looked back across her shoulder. "Engaged? How many times?" she asked quite bluntly. As though the whole monogamous groundwork of civilization was threatened by the question, Rae Malgregor's hands went clutching at her breast. "Why, once!" she gasped. "Why, once!"