s had mattered, had seemed imposing. But the girls
ascended the steps of a house which was typical of the row, except
that five motor-cars stood before it. Carl, passing, went up the
steps of the next house and rang the bell.

"What a funny place!" he heard one of the girls--he judged that it was
Ruth--remark from the neighboring stoop. "It looks exactly like Aunt
Emma when she wears an Alexandra bang. Do we go right up? Oughtn't we
to ring? It ought to be the craziest party--anarchists----"

"A party, eh?" thought Carl.

"----ought to ring, I suppose, but----Yes, there's sure to be all
sorts of strange people at Mrs. Hallet's----" said the voice of the
other girl, then the door closed upon both of them.

And an abashed Carl realized that a maid had opened the door of the
house at which he himself had rung, and was glaring at him as he
craned over to view the next-door stoop.

"W-where----Does Dr. Brown live here?" he stuttered.

"No, 'e don't," the maid snapped, closing the door.

Carl groaned: "He don't? Dear old Brown? Not live here? Huh? What
shall I do?"

In remarkably good spirits he moved over in front of the house into
which Ruth and Olive had gone. People were coming to the party in twos
and threes. Yes. The men were in evening clothes. He had his
information.

Swinging his stick up to a level with his shoulder at each stride, he
raced to Fifty-ninth Street and the nearest taxi-stand. He was whirled
to his room. He literally threw his clothes off. He shaved hastily,
singing, "Will You Come to the Ball," from "The Quaker Girl," and
slipped into evening clothes and his suavest dress-shirt. Seizing
things all at once--top-hat, muffler, gloves, pocketbook,
handkerchief, cigarette-case, keys--and hanging them about him as he
fled down the decorous stairs, he skipped to the taxicab and started
again for Fifty-blankth Street.

At the house of the party he stopped to find on the letter-box in the
entry the name "Mrs. Hallet," mentioned by Olive. There was no such
name. He tried the inner door. It opened. He cheerily began to mount
steep stairs, which kept on for miles, climbing among slate-colored
walls, past empty wall-niches with toeless plaster statues. The
hallways, dim and high and snobbish, and the dark old double doors,
scowled at him. He boldly returned the scowl. He could hear the
increasing din of a talk-party coming from above. When he reached the
top floor he found a door open on a big room cro