's her, sure as you're born," cried the gentleman who traveled in
molasses, absent-mindedly abstracting three cigars and conveying them
surreptitiously to his coat pocket.

"She's fallen off some in flesh," commented Horace, as with careful
presence of mind he drew out his daybook and entered a charge for those
three cigars.

"But she don't fool me," said Jimmie, "she can put flesh on or she can
take it off--"

"My, how you talk!" shrilled the chambermaid-bellboy, "you'd think you
was talkin' about clothes."

"It ain't no different to them," Jimmie maintained. "That's one of the
things us detekitives has got to watch out for."

"What do you s'pose she's doing here?" asked the porter.

"Gettin' married again most likely. That's about all she does nowadays."

Patty was still chuckling and choking over these remarks, when the door
of the sitting-room opened cautiously and Kate Perry, swathed in her
motor veil, looked in.

"Are we alone?" she demanded with proper melodramatic accent.

"We are," the bride answered, "Winthrop and Mr. Mead have gone out for a
smoke."

"Then I want you to tell me if I'm fading at all. I've been looking at
it upstairs, in a little two-by-three mirror, and taken that way, by
inches, it looks awful. Tell me what you think?" She removed the veil
and presented her damaged face for her friend's inspection. There was
not much improvement to report, but the always optimistic Patty did what
she could with it.

[Illustration: SHE SWOOPED UNDER THE LARGE CENTER TABLE, DRAGGING PATTY
WITH HER.]

"The left cheek," she pronounced, "is really better, less swollen,
less--Oh! Kate, here they come."

Miss Perry began to readjust her charitable gray chiffon veil. It was
one of those which are built around a circular aperture, and as the
steps in the hall came ever closer she, in one last frantic effort
succeeded in framing the most lurid of her eyes in this opening. Casting
one last look into the mirror, she swooped under the large center-table,
dragging Patty with her, and disposing their various frills and ribbons
under the long-hanging tablecover.

"If they don't find either of us," she whispered, "they'll go away to
look for us."

She had no time to say more, and Patty had no time to say anything
before the door opened and presented to their limited range of vision,
two utterly strange pairs of shoes and the hems of alien trousers.

"I hope you will excuse me, Miss," began the molasses ge