ure enough! So somebody is! Yes, yes! It must be my boss. That's
where I live. Boss lets us bunk in the dust-bin."

Father's voice was excited, slightly hysterical. Mr. Hartwig looked at
him wonderingly. "What do you mean, 'in the dust-bin'?" he asked, in a
puzzled way.

"I'll show you," said Father, and in a low, poisonous voice he added
certain words which could not be made out, but which sounded curiously
like "you great big fat weevily ham!"

"We can't butt into this party," protested Mr. Hartwig, suddenly feeling
himself in a strange town, among strangers, as Father took his arm in
front of the bungalow where the party was being fearlessly enacted.

"I never knew you to hesitate about butting in before," said Father.
"Some day I hope you butt into the Cyrus K. Ginn Home for Old Fossils,
but now--"

While Mr. Hartwig followed him in alarm, Father skipped up the steps,
jabbed at the push-button. The door opened on the living-room--and on a
tableau.

In the center of a group of expensive-looking people stood Mother,
gorgeous in a gown like a herald's cloth-of-gold tabard. She was as
magnificent as one of the larger chairs in a New York hotel lobby. Her
hair was waved. She was coldly staring at Harris through a platinum
lorgnon. Round her were the elite of Lipsittsville--the set that wore
dinner coats and drove cars. A slim and pretty girl in saffron-colored
silk bowed elaborately. A tall man with an imperial chuckled.

"Why, Harris, this is ver', ver' pleasant. I had almost forgotten you
were coming," Mother said, languidly.... Harris could not know that the
distinguished pedestrian, actor, impresario, and capitalist, Mr. Seth
Appleby, had spent two hours and seventeen minutes in training the
unwilling Mother to deliver this speech. If Mother stumbled somewhat as
she went on, that merely enhanced her manner of delicate languor: "So
pleasant to see you. Just a few of our friends dropped in for a little
informal gathering. Would you like to wash up and join us? Seth dear,
will you ring for Lena and have her take dear Harris's bag to his room?
Did you bring your evening clothes, Harris?"

One time in his life, Harris had rented evening clothes, but otherwise--

They didn't give Harris a chance to ask for explanations. When, still in
his dusty bulbous gray sack suit, he hesitated out of his pleasant room,
he found that Father had changed to dinner coat and a stock, which he
was old enough to wear with distinctio