CLEAN BREAK By ROGER DEE A veteran veterinarian might have vamoosed—but Watts had to help any sick animal .. . Illustrated by CONNELL N OTHING more exciting ever happened to Oliver Watts than being rejected by his draft board fora punctured eardrum until deferring as usual to the superior judgment of his Aunt Katisha andof Glenna —his elder and militantly spinster sister—he put away his lifelong dream and took up at theage of twenty-five the practice of veterinary medicine. The relinquished dream was Olivers ambition cherished since childhood to become some day ahunter and trainer of jungle animals. It had been discouraged firmly and at length by his AuntKatisha who maintained that the skin of the last male Watts was not to be risked in a pursuitso perilous and his Aunt Katisha won. He would do far better Oliver realized finally toresign himself to the quiet suburban life of Landsdale Florida and to perpetuate the Wattsline by marrying some worthy and practical local girl. The quiet life it developed was thatof a D. V. M. the worthy and practical girl Miss Orella Simms of Tampa to whom he was nowengaged. To put it plainly Oliver was until the moment of his Great Opportunity a good-humored stoogewith a cowlick and a sense of responsibility whose invariable cue was family obligation andwhose crowning virtue was docility. He was maneuvered into becoming a D. V. M. though to tellthe truth the profession suited him well enough being the nearest possible approach torealizing his ambition solely because the veterinary college in Tampa was near enough toLandsdale for commuting and because his later practice could be carried on under the guidingaegis of his personal matriarchy. The virtuous and vapid Orella Simms became his fiancee bythe same tactics and for the same reasons. Oliver