hiskers
quiver.

"I know nothing whatever about _any_ lady in _any_ of your rooms," he
roared, greatly to the delight of the bellboys. "I know nothing about
your Underwood woman, with her doctors and her hysterics. I want to see
the manager."

"If," said the telephone maiden, adjusting her skirt at the hips and
shaking her figure into greater conformity with the ideal she had set
before it--"If this gentleman is 2525 Gram., then the lady in 625 rang
him up at seven-thirty and held the wire seven minutes talkin' to him
and cryin' to beat Sousa's band. All about her uncle she was talkin'. I
guess it was him, all right, all right. His voice sounds sort of
familiar to me when he talks mad."

But John had neither eyes nor ears for Uncle Richard's wrath. He
snatched the key and the paper upon which the supercilious clerk had
inscribed, at Marjorie's embarrassed dictation, "Mrs. Underwood, West
Hills, N.J. (husband to arrive later), 625 and 6," and, since love is
keen, he jumped to the right conclusion and the open elevator without
further delay.

An hour or so later the attention of the clerk and the telephone-girl
was again drawn to the complicated Blakes. A party of four sauntered out
of the dining-room and approached the desk.

"I'll register now, I think," said John. And when he had finished he
turned to the star-eyed girl behind him.

"Look carefully at this, Marjorie," he admonished. "Mr. and Mrs. John
Blake. _You_ are Mrs. John Blake. Do you think you can remember that?"

"Don't laugh at me," she pleaded, "Gladys says it was a most natural
mistake, and so does Bob. Don't you, Gladys and Bob?"

"An almost inevitable mistake," they chorused mendaciously, "but," added
Bob, "a rather disastrous mistake for your uncle to explain to his wife,
the doctor and the nurse. He'll be able for it, though; I never saw so
game an old chap."

"And I'll never do it again," she promised. People never do when they've
been married a long, long time, and I feel as though I had been married
thousands and thousands of years."

"Poor, tired little girl," said John, "you have had a rather indifferent
time of it. Say good-night to Dick and Gladys. Come, my dear."

MISERY LOVES COMPANY.

"But, Win," remonstrated the bride-elect, "I really don't think we
_could_. Wouldn't it look awfully strange? I don't think I ever heard of
its being done."

"Neither did I," he agreed. "And yet I want you to do it. Look at it
from my po