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suit, and held me close for more kisses, out there in the front porch.
    Then she introduced me to her friends, who stepped outside with us, a couple by the name of Hamell, and I give you one guess how much interest I took in them. But with the old Maryland spirit, I pumped their hands, asked them to lunch and wouldn’t take no for an answer. So then we started out, the ladies with me in my car, he following along in his. The idea was that after lunch they’d come back and pick up the bags, then drive to Philadelphia, where they’d pick up another lady, and then head north and tour Canada for a month. “Fine, fine, fine,” I said, though what was fine about it I didn’t know then and don’t know now.
    I took them to the Royal Arms, which served us a nice lunch. We talked mainly of Canada, and I kept cautioning Hamell to take it easy on the Canadian roads. “They’re okay,” I said, “well-built and well-graded, but they have an item called frost, so they bulge and buckle and break.”
    “There’s no frost in Prince Georges,” said Jane.
    “There is, but not much.”
    “Prince Georges County is Dixie.” At last, this endless lunch was over and we went out on the big portico that overlooks the parking lot, where Jane lingered with me while the Hamells went down for their car. I took the envelope I’d sealed up the night before out of my pocket, and handed it over to her. It contained four weeks’ allowance, four hundred dollars in twenties, and I said: “I thought it might come in handy, while you’re traveling around.”
    She opened it, counted it, and looked at the gag card I’d put in. Then she pulled my face down and kissed me. “You look like Handsome Dan,” she said. Handsome Dan was the original Yale bulldog, whose picture she’d seen on one of her trips to New Haven, visiting me. Then she kissed me again, and said: “Your kept woman thanks you.”
    “Why do you say things like that?” I asked her. “I’m under a thousand obligations to you, and if now and then I try to return the favor, I’m only too glad. You needn’t take cracks at yourself.”
    “Cracks? I thought I was bragging.”
    She looked at me somewhat peculiarly, then asked: “Have you seen your mother lately?”
    “I was with her this morning, yes.”
    “She’s in a spot.”
    “She’s in a spot? What about me?”
    Now if mentally we’d really been in tune, that was her cue to say something, to get in there with it, to give me something to chew on. But, close though we were, in a way, on that level we never seemed to make it. She gave it the back of her hand, in spite of my upset, which I didn’t try to conceal. “Oh I wouldn’t worry about it,” she trilled in a very bland way. “It’s depressing, and must be damned annoying. Just the same it could be worse. Not saying that Burl should not be ashamed of himself. He’s a handsome boy, but wayward, very wayward.”
    “What he did to that girl was inexcusable.”
    “Oh, don’t waste any tears on her—one perhaps, but not a bucketful. She’ll get over it. She’s not the first girl, and won’t be the last, to get caught under the gate. Frailty, thy name is woman, don’t forget.”
    “Unfortunately, this was a slight case of rape.”
    “Oh it always is when Mommy finds out.” Then, as though none of it amounted to much: “If I were you, though, and you can afford it, I’d pick up the tab—it might relieve the tension. I mean the Florence Crittenton charges.”
    “I thought of that. I made the offer.”
    “...And?”
    “Declined—with a kick in the teeth.”
    “Keep trying, Gramie.”
    The car rolled up, I took her down and put her in, and that was all that we said on the subject. I’d have given anything for something helpful out of her, and she didn’t seem to know it. I kissed her good-bye, shook hands with the Hamells, stood back and watched them roll off. Then I found my own car and started once more for my own headache.

Chapter 6
    I HAD TOLD