CHAPTER II
THEY went out together in Gregg's car, which was a new one, not fully paid for, but a good deal better than Billy's. It was a roadster with space for three on the wide seat, and consequently Gregg, while he drove, had plenty of room to sprawl comfortably, especially as Billy, who never let himself be lazy, sat erect on the right. They did not talk much about anything and not at all of Marjorie Hale or of Gregg's offer from Hartford. The March night was clear and mild for Chicago at the end of the winter; a little snow had fallen the day before, and melted that noon, and after sunset had refrozen, forming a film of ice here and there on the roadway.
"You ought to have chains on," Billy advised.
"Oh, I like to slip a little How do you care for the pick-up of this engine? Michigan's playing Illinois basketball to-night."
"I saw; at Ann Arbor. How is our five, Gregg?"
Neither thought much about what he was saying; each lit a cigarette and absorbed himself in his own thoughts. As they proceeded from the promontory of the new, "made" land, they turned north beside the lake on the Drive, which follows the line of the shore where the perfectors of Chicago temporarily have remained so indulgent to nature that they have merely buttressed back the washing waters with a low, graceful, concrete escarpment and planted a strip of park between this stern beach and the Drive. Opposite, on
