But Don, standing before the blaze in the grate, with his back to the table, was facing a smiling photograph of Margaret Richardson on the mantelpiece. It was a picture finished and mounted, and not a mere "proof"; he remembered that, on the afternoon on which he had last seen her, she had said she expected her photographs to come home on the following day; and he understood that Conroy must have seen her since that time. He took down the picture and turned it over to find it dated in her handwriting "March 22." Then she had not been ill.
"Look out there, McLean," one of the boys chaffed, "Gregg's trying to get away with your girl."
The boy who was named Pittsey—a youth of literary pretensions, in a dressing-gown—called out: "Which one? Not the prettiest girl he ever kissed!"
Conroy attempted to silence them with a frantic expression of face. They shouted gleefully, scenting game, and prepared to pursue it with all the barbarism natural to the young collegian.
"Don't be shy now, McLean."
"A kiss and a cuddle, wasn't it?"
"It's the girl that plays the piano with one hand while he holds the other. Give him another pint of pop and hell tell us all about it again."
Don turned, horrified. Conroy was trying to carry an expression of unconscious innocence, but it broke in a befuddled and foolish smile. "Oh, shut up, you clams," he said. "That's not the girl."
They howled. "See him blush!" "Who's a liar?" "Didn't you tell us, when you brought in that picture"
