in her vast muff.

This sentimental explosion was too much for tender-hearted Sadie. She
gave way completely and swore not to breathe another word in
opposition to the elopement. And as she felt her beloved cousin's body
shaken with sobs, she forced herself to go into ecstasies over Travers
Gladwin's manly beauty and god-like intellect. In her haste to soothe
she went to extravagant lengths and cried:

"And he must have looked heavenly in his bathing suit when he made
that wonderful rescue."

Down fell Helen's muff with as much of a crash as a muff could make
and she turned upon her companion the most profoundly shocked
expression of a bride-about-to-be.

"Sadie," she reproved stiffly, "you have gone far enough."

Whereupon it was Sadie's turn to seek the sanctuary of tears.

CHAPTER V.

WHITNEY BARNES TELEPHONES TO THE RITZ.

Glancing up into the solemn face of an unusually good-looking young
man who wore his silk hat at a jaunty angle and whose every detail of
attire suggested that he was of that singularly blessed class who toil
not neither do they spin, Miss Mamie McCorkle, public telephone
operator in the tallest-but-one skyscraper below the Fulton street
dead line, expected to be asked to look up some number in the
telephone book and be generously rewarded for the trifling exertion.
It wasn't any wonder, then, that she broke the connections of two
captains of industry and one get-rich-quick millionaire when this was
what she got:

"Suppose, my dear young lady, that you had a premonition--a hunch, I
might say--that you were destined this current day of the calendar
week to meet your Kismet in petticoats, wouldn't it make you feel a
bit hollow inside and justify you in taking your first drink before
your customary hour for absorbing the same?"

Usually a live wire at repartee, Mamie McCorkle was stumped. With a
captain of industry swearing in each ear and the get-rich-quick
millionaire trying to break in with his more artistic specialties in
profanity, she was for a moment frozen into silence. When she did come
to the surface, she set the captains of industry down where they
belonged, retorted upon the get-rich-quick millionaire that he was no
gentleman and she hoped he would inform the manager she said so and
then raised her eyebrows at the interrogator who leaned against her
desk.

"If that's an invitation to lunch, _No_! I'm already dated," she said.
"If you're trying to kid me, ring off,