She read manfully on, wondering what had come over her friend to make him so particularly--well, personal was the word. The ringless hand seemed especially to take his fancy. He referred to it several times, and Joan could not well explain these references to her audience. She left them to draw their own conclusions; which they did, with some exchanging of glances. There was an audible breath after she had finished. Emily Carmichael voiced the Jabberwocks when she asked casually, "Did you say he was young, Joan?" "Oh, dear, no! Quite old. Forty or fifty, or thereabouts. An uncle-ish sort of person." "Goodness," murmured somebody. "Fancy having an uncle like that!..." Joan was asked to meetings of the club again. In fact, she was shortly invited to become a Jabberwock herself, having, without quite realizing why, been promoted from the rank of mere débutante to that of Interesting Person. In this way she came into contact with a phase of Louisville society strange to her father, strange even to the Misses Darcy, expert as they were in the ways of the best people. She learned that lately many little groups such as this club had come into existence, formed of women who had grown tired of more superficial forms of amusement, and had come together in the vague pursuit of something better. "Do you know, I think we're rather in a transition state nowadays," explained Emily Carmichael. "It's as if we were waiting for something real to happen, marking time. The town's growing up, just as people grow up, and getting tired of childish games--Of course there's always been plenty of intellectual life here, as there is in most old Southern places where people have had leisure for books. We've even produced our share of literature." (Joan nodded, recalling her poet at the Country Club, and remembering several names which are usually associated less with Louisville than with the world of letters.) "But heretofore the intellectual people have been privileged characters, set apart and labeled, and expected to be a little odd about their clothes and hair--_you_ know! It's only lately that we ordinary folk have concerned ourselves with--well, culture, I suppose it is, though one hates the word! And there is something almost pathetic in the way we herd together to pursue it, as if to give each other countenance!" "Not half as pathetic as trying to pursue it alone," said Joan, who knew. "Anyway, it's distinctly smart nowadays to read and have opinions and know something, even in our most frivolous circles--thank heaven!" "'Business of being a high-brow,' as Archie Blair would say," smiled Joan. "Oh, Archie Blair! Isn't he absurd?" Joan suddenly found herself on the defensive. It was all well enough for her to laugh at her protégé, but she did not intend to extend the privilege to others. "I like him very much," she said, with decision. "He's honest and nice. I believe I like him better than any man I know."