Yet I enjoyed myself in his company—as who wouldn’t if her only friends were so sappy they could be guilty of thinking a cockade was a kind of chicken broth! There are only two kinds of aristocratic boys: the devil-may-care variety like Jay-Jay and the sweet God-fearing innocents who make worms look like express trains. When the son sinks in the best of regulated families, he’s usually reverting to the type of his pioneer ancestors who had to take both life and love in their two fists. Most blue blood was originally red of flaming hue, and when families begin to forget that fact, you can lay odds that the deep old roots of the family maple aren’t sending sap enough up to supply the high and mighty branches of to-day. When family trees get too high they wither at the top, and such dry sticks are only useful as fertilizer for younger trees. That’s why the worst high-hats are invariably worn by people who are really low-brow. Naturally, I enjoyed Jay-Jay’s company at that time and not the least of the reasons for this lay in the fact that he kept me on edge and on the defensive most of the time. When a girl suspects that a man is about to assault her on the least provocation, she naturally gets a thrill out of the dare, and I was normal in that respect even though all the rigmarole of infatuation and love were utterly foreign to my nature. Jay-Jay knew I was a tomboy at heart and he played his cards accordingly. I fell headlong into the trap by responding to his dare. Please don’t imagine for a moment that anything melodramatic happened so soon as this. Jay-Jay was a perfectly nice young man—for quite a while. He could usually be depended upon to get intoxicated and he always took advantage of every opportunity for making love to me, but all this was direct and above the board—like romantic gestures, as it were. He didn’t resort to underhand violence until quite some time later in our affair. A few incidents that I recall off-hand will serve to indicate how we behaved ourselves during this more or less casual, but always threatening, romance. On one occasion he took us—Leon, Vyvy and me—to a masquerade in the Big Town, a huge affair that was given annually for the benefit of indigent members of the theatrical profession. It was Aunt Elinor’s suggestion that Leon and I dress in identical costumes, therefore it was really her fault that Jay-Jay and Vyvy had a difficult time distinguishing us from each other, because my hair was tucked up and completely concealed under a grotesque hat so that Leon and I looked exactly alike. When Aunt Elinor inspected us before we set off, she exclaimed prophetically, “You’ll catch your escort courting your brother!” And her laughter at this thought is sufficient evidence of her atrocious sense of humor.