"You don't have to do that," Jerry said. "I was getting around to it—eventually."

She whirled to face him. Her eyes turned from azure to ultramarine. "You might tell me what's going on around here!"

"Suppose you tell me. I'm still trying to catch up with it myself."

"Thief!"

"Thief?"

"Stealing Scotch whiskey and my new plaid skirt! But you made a mistake on the rum butter toffee. I trailed the wrappers."

The Scotch whiskey and rum toffee Jerry could see a reason for—but not the plaid skirt. "So help me, I'm innocent."

"So you're innocent!" She dashed to a corner behind the easel and snatched a plaid skirt from the floor.

"You'll just have to believe me. I had nothing to do with it."

"Oh no?"

"Look at me. Do I look like a criminal?"

As she looked her expression softened slightly, but she said, "I always picked the wrong picture in psychology tests. It's you innocent looking fellows that always turn out to be the crooks."

Jerry tried his best to look desperate. The result was too much for Heather Higgins, who laughed.

"Hold it," Jerry said. "I want to catch your eyes."

He grabbed his brush and made several quick strokes on the canvas.

"Why," she said, "it looks like me—a little. But I'm not that pretty."

"You are. And it'd look more like you if I didn't have to do it from memory."

And that was how Heather Higgins reluctantly happened to promise Jerry Masterson she'd return next morning for a sitting. She left, and Jerry was eating dinner when Captain Wully walked in to the whistled measures of Comin' Through the Rye.

"Rye!" said Jerry. "You? Rye?"

"I borrowed her old man's Scotch, if that's what you're gettin' at. And if you think I 

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