makeup and the artful padding, his mouth was shockingly twisted, and tears were running out of his eyes. "A long sharp knife, folks!" He paused momentarily to recover his voice, which had begun to shake. "Go on being happy, go on being sheep. Wear the clothesies, and eat the foodsies, and don't dare think! Me—I'd rather be dead, and damned, and in hell!"

Fortunately nobody heard the last three sentences. The paralyzed engineer had recovered in time to cut him off during the pause, and had signalled the stagehand to draw the curtain and the sound man to play the Happy Clown sign-off record—loud. Steven finished himself thoroughly, however, by repeating the same sentiments, with some others he happened to think of, to Denise and the sponsors, when they all came pouring out of the booth. Then he collapsed.

Steven's Steyner was a complete success. He recovered from it a subdued, agreeable and thoroughly conventional young man, who had the impression that he had suffered a nervous breakdown. He was discharged from the Happy Hour at the end of January, innocently leaving behind him the broken hearts of three nurses and one female physician, and went home to his parents. During his convalescence they were patient with him and passionately kind. In spite of the disgrace they felt, a disgrace that would never be mentioned, they loved him even better than before, because now he was irrevocably like them.

Denise was lost to him. The outburst in the studio, and the Steyner, and the loss of the Happy Clown part were cumulatively too much for her. She broke the engagement and was heard to say that Stevie Russell had proved himself an absolute fool. He was miserable over it, though he had only a hazy idea of what he had done or why Denny should suddenly be so unkind to him.

The Happy Clown incident had passed off well—immediately after it occurred, a powerful battery of comedians, including the Jolly Kitten and the Dancing Dogsie, forgetting rivalries to rally 'round in a crisis, went on the air to insure that it passed off well. They made certain that every viewer should regard the whole thing as a tremendously funny if rather mystifying joke. The viewers fell in with this opinion easily and laughed about the sheep joke a good deal, admiring the Happy Clown's sense of humor—a little sharp, to be sure, not so folksy and down-to-earth as usual, but the Happy Clown could do no wrong. They said to each other, "He laughed till he cried, did you notice? So did I!" For a while teenagers addressed each other as, "Hi, sheep!" (girls were, "Hi, lamb!"), and a novelty company in 

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