living room, chatting with each other of the little events of the day, and between them the lamp, bright and silent. Gaylord thought for a minute. "Guess Dad will be glad I'm going out for a change. I've always stayed home too much, he says. From now on I'm going to go to everything. I'm going to go to every dance or party from now on. I'm not going to say no any more. If I'm a flop I might as well find it out now. I might as well."
Gaylord considered himself a mistreated hero; he still smarted under the insults of his classmates. But this would change too. They wouldn't have any reason to call him sissy again.
He hurried downstairs, thinking, not seeing the mass of shaded colors in the large oriental rug which almost covered the parquet floor of the living room. The soreness over his classmates' bitter words lessened gradually, and Gaylord began to be eager to be at the dance. The forlorn look was discarded. He was thinking of what he was going to say to Blake when he saw him.
The room was vacant but the lamp he had thought of was burning. He wondered where his parents were as he passed through the lovely rectangular room, filled with costly furniture, draperies, and vases. Gaylord noted with pride several roses in a crystal vase. He leaned forward to smell their fragrance.
"Well, you look mighty sharp. Where ya going, Gay?"
Gaylord jumped to stiff attention. The words brought him back into the room. He had been so absorbed he had not been aware of his father sitting in a large, carved upholstered chair. The words startled him, but instead of Blake who had been so vividly on his mind, there sat his father, Clayton Le Claire, who was the personification of things he had always longed for, assurance and polish.
He turned quickly, straightened his shoulders and forced a smile. "Oh," he said. "I didn't see you, Dad."
Clayton Le Claire held a newspaper in his large brown hand, and a cigarette with grey ashes of an unbelievable length was between his healthy lips. The light from the porcelain lamp shone brightly upon him and glistened on thick, curly hair, intensifying its blackness, and his dark brows gave his face a youthfulness which was most becoming. His linen was immaculate and as faultless as the small and closely
