rsation. He knew at once
that Harmony was there.

Peter hardly hesitated. He took off his soft hat and ran a hand over his
hair, and he straightened his tie. These preliminaries to a proposal of
marriage being disposed of, he rapped at the door.

Anna Gates opened it. She wore a hideous red-flannel wrapper, and in
deference to Harmony a thimble. Her flat breast was stuck with pins, and
pinkish threads revealed the fact that the bathrobe was still under way.

"Peter!" she cried. "Come in and get warm."

Harmony, in the blue kimono, gave a little gasp, and flung round her
shoulders the mass of pink on which she had been working.

"Please go out!" she said. "I am not dressed."

"You are covered," returned Anna Gates. "That's all that any sort of
clothing can do. Don't mind her, Peter, and sit on the bed. Look out for
pins!"

Peter, however, did not sit down. He stood just inside the closed door
and stared at Harmony--Harmony in the red light from the little
open door of the stove; Harmony in blue and pink and a bit of white
petticoat; Harmony with her hair over her shoulders and tied out of her
eyes with an encircling band of rosy flannel.

"Do sit!" cried Anna Gates. "You fill the room so. Bless you, Peter,
what a collar!"

No man likes to know his collar is soiled, especially on the eve of
proposing marriage to a pink and blue and white vision. Peter, seated
now on the bed, writhed.

"I rapped at Miss Wells's door," he said. "You were not there."

This last, of course, to Harmony.

Anna Gates sniffed.

"Naturally!"

"I had something to say to you. I--I dare say it is hardly pension
etiquette for you to go over to your room and let me say it there?"

Harmony smiled above the flannel.

"Could you call it through the door?"

"Hardly."

"Fiddlesticks!" said Dr. Gates, rising. "I'll go over, of course, but
not for long. There's no fire."

With her hand on the knob, however, Harmony interfered.

"Please!" she implored. "I am not dressed and I'd rather not." She
turned to Peter. "You can say it before her, can't you? She--I have told
her all about things."

Peter hesitated. He felt ridiculous for the second time that night.
Then:--

"It was merely an idea I had. I saw a little apartment furnished--you
could learn to use the stove, unless, of course, you don't like
housekeeping--and food is really awfully cheap. Why, at these
delicatessen places and bakeshops--"

Here he paused for breath and foun