son, and what his wife did to him. She talked of it sort of sad, kind
of regretful, as if she was sorry, but felt that it had to be. I could
see she had been thinking about it a whole lot.'

Charlie stiffened in his seat, and then began to melt with pure fright.
He took up his empty glass with a shaking hand and drank a long drink
out of it. It didn't take much observation to see that he had had the
jolt he wanted, and was going to be a whole heap less jaunty and
metropolitan from now on. In fact, the way he looked, I should say he
had finished with metropolitan jauntiness for the rest of his life.

'I'll take her home tomorrow,' he said. 'But--will she come?'

'That's up to you. If you can persuade her--Here she is now. I should
start at once.'

Mrs Charlie, carrying the cup, came to the table. I was wondering what
would be the first thing she would say. If it had been Charlie, of
course he'd have said, 'This is the life!' but I looked for something
snappier from her. If I had been in her place there were at least ten
things I could have thought of to say, each nastier than the other.

She sat down and put the cup on the table. Then she gave the cup a long
look. Then she drew a deep breath. Then she looked at Charlie.

'Oh, Charlie, dear,' she said, 'I do wish I'd been dancing with you!'

Well, I'm not sure that that wasn't just as good as anything I would
have said. Charlie got right off the mark. After what I had told him,
he wasn't wasting any time.

'Darling,' he said, humbly, 'you're a wonder! What will they say about
this at home?' He did pause here for a moment, for it took nerve to say
it; but then he went right on. 'Mary, how would it be if we went home
right away--first train tomorrow, and showed it to them?'

'Oh, Charlie!' she said.

His face lit up as if somebody had pulled a switch.

'You will? You don't want to stop on? You aren't wild about New York?'

'If there was a train,' she said, 'I'd start tonight. But I thought you
loved the city so, Charlie?'

He gave a kind of shiver. 'I never want to see it again in my life!' he
said.

'You'll excuse me,' I said, getting up, 'I think there's a friend of
mine wants to speak to me.'

And I crossed over to where Izzy had been standing for the last five
minutes, making signals to me with his eyebrows.

You couldn't have called Izzy coherent at first. He certainly had
trouble with his vocal chords, poor fellow. There was one of those
African exp