"By the way, Roger, we'll be five instead of four for dinner tomorrow."
"A friend of Marcia's, Channing Lloyd, a chap from town. He came up today."
That admission cost Jerry something, and it explained many things, for I had heard of Channing Lloyd.
"Ah, very well," I said carelessly and shook out my paper.
The boy was changed. It may not seem a serious thing to you, my precocious reader, who number your flirtations among the trivial affairs of life. Calf love, you will say, is not a matter worth bothering one's brains about. You will class that ailment perhaps with the whooping cough and the measles and sneer it out of existence. But I would remind you that Jerry's mind and character were quite mature. I had schooled them myself and I know. If Jerry had fallen in love with Marcia Van Wyck who proposed to play at her game of "pitch-farthing" with so fine a soul as Jerry's, the thing was serious, serious for both of them. His attitude toward the girl in his conversation tonight reminded me that affairs had already progressed a long way. She had come to Briar Hills, flattering Jerry, of course, that they could be alone, intriguing meanwhile with Channing Lloyd, a wild fellow, according to Jack Ballard, who at thirty could have unprofitably shared his omniscience with the devil. A fine foil for Jerry!
At dinner, the following night, we made a curious party. Marcia Van Wyck, radiant in pale green, with her admirers one at either hand; Channing Lloyd, dark, massive, well-groomed, with a narrow smile and an air of complete domination of the table; Jerry at the other side, rolling bread-pills and forcing humor rather awkwardly; Miss Gore, solemn in black satin--all of them elegant and correct in evening clothes, while I in my rather shabby serge sat awkwardly trying to hide the shininess of my elbows. From my position at one end of the table I had an excellent opportunity to study the company. I saw in Lloyd, I think, the attraction for Marcia. His looks, his topics, his appetites were animal and gross. He drank continuously, smoked after his salad, and monopolized the guest of the evening to the complete exclusion of the others. Fragments of their talk reached me, of which I understood a little--Greek to Jerry. Miss Gore sat calmly through it all, leading Jerry into the conversation at propitious moments and out of it when it threatened incomprehension.