“Danced with you three times to-night, haven’t I?” he demanded.  He was rather surprised to find that this was so.

“Wisht it was thirty.”

That was Wanda.  Her very eagerness foiled her.  She cheapened herself.  When Chug said, “Can I see you home?” he knew the answer before he put the question.  Too easy to get along with, Wanda.  Always there ahead of time, waiting, when you made a date with her.  Too ready to forgive you when you failed to show up.  Telephoned you when you were busy.  Didn’t give a fellow a chance to come half way, but went seven eighths of it herself.  An ignorant, kindly, dangerous girl, with the physical development of a woman and the mind of a child.  There were dozens like her in Chippewa.

If the girls of his own class noticed him at all it was the more to ignore him as a rather grimy mechanic passing briefly before their vision down Outagamie Street on his way to and from dinner.  He was shy of them.  They had a middle-class primness which forbade their making advances even had they been so inclined.  Chug would no more have scraped acquaintance with them than he would have tried to flirt with Angie Hatton, Old Man Hatton’s daughter, and the richest girl in Chippewa—­so rich that she drove her own car with the chauffeur stuck up behind.

You didn’t have to worry about Wanda and her kind.  There they were, take them or leave them.  They expected you to squeeze their waist when you danced with them, and so you did.  You didn’t have to think about what you were going to say to them.

Mrs. Scaritt suspected in a vague sort of way that Chug was “running with the hired girls.”  The thought distressed her.  She was too smart a woman to nag him about it.  She tried diplomacy.

“Why don’t you bring some young folks home to eat, Chug?  I like to fuss around for company.”  She was a wonderful cook, Mrs. Scaritt, and liked to display her skill.

“Who is there to bring?”

“The boys and girls you go around with.  Who is it you’re always fixing up for, evenings?”

“Nobody.”

Mrs. Scaritt tried another tack.

“I s’pose this house isn’t good enough for ’em?  Is that it?”

“Good enough!” Chug laughed rather grimly.  “I’d like to know what’s the matter with it!”

There was, as a matter of fact, nothing the matter with it.  It was as spick and span as paint and polish could make it.  The curtain-stretching days were long past.  There had even been talk of moving out of the house by the tracks, but at the last moment Mrs. Scaritt had rebelled.

“I’ll miss the sound of the trains.  I’m used to ’em.  It’s got so I can tell just where my right hand’ll be when the seven fifty-two goes by in the morning, and I’ve got used to putting on the potatoes when I hear the ’leven-forty.  Let’s stay, Chug.”