e train that we had a friend who was a
famous aviator, and she was so interested to find that we knew you.
Good night."

They had the Welsh rarebit, with beer, and Carl helped to make it.
Gertie summoned him into the scoured kitchen, saying, with a beautiful
casualness, as she tied an apron about him:

"We can't afford a hired girl (I suppose I should say a 'maid'),
because mamma has put so much of our money into Ray's business, so you
mustn't expect anything so very grand. But you'd like to help,
wouldn't you? You're to chop the cheese. Cut it into weenty cubes."

Carl did like to help. He boasted that he was the "champion
cheese-chopper of Harlem and the Bronx, one-thirty-three ringside,"
while Gertie was toasting crackers, and Ray was out buying bottles of
beer in a newspaper. It all made Carl feel more than ever at home....
It was good to be with people of such divine understanding that they
knew what he meant when he said, "I suppose there _have_ been worse
teachers than Prof Larsen----!"

When the rabbit lay pale in death, a saddening _debacle_ of hardened
cheese, and they sat with their elbows on the Modified Mission
dining-table, Gertie exclaimed:

"Oh, Ray, you _must_ do that new stunt of yours for Carl. It's
screamingly funny, Carl."

Ray rose, had his collar and tie off in two jocund jerks, buttoned his
collar on backward, cheerily turned his waistcoat back side foremost,
lengthened his face to an expression of unctuous sanctimoniousness,
and turned about--transformed in one minute to a fair imitation of a
stage curate. With his hands folded, Ray droned, "Naow, sistern, it
behooveth us heuh in St. Timothee's Chutch," while Carl pounded the
table in his delight at seeing old Ray, the broad-shouldered, the
lady-killer, the capable business man, drop his eyes and yearn.

"Now you must do a stunt!" shrieked Ray and Gertie; and Carl
hesitatingly sang what he remembered of Forrest Haviland's foolish
song:

"I went up in a balloon so big
The people on the earth they looked like a pig,
Like a mice, like a katydid, like flieses and like fleasen."

Then, without solicitation, Gertie decided to dance "Gather the Golden
Sheaves," which she had learned at the school of Mme. Vashkowska, late
(though not very late) of the Russian ballet.

She explained her work; outlined the theory of sensuous and esthetic
dancing; mentioned the backgrounds of Bakst and the glories of
Nijinsky; told her ambition to