ze-nineteen collar and a
forty-six-inch waistband.

The next time befell some ten days after the Propbridges returned from
the shore to their thirty-thousand-dollars-a-year apartment on Upper
Park Avenue. The very fact that they did live in an apartment and that
they did spend a good part of their time there would stamp them for what
they were--persons not yet to be included among the really fashionable
group. The really fashionable maintained large homes which they occupied
when they came to town to have dental work done or to launch a debutante
daughter into society; the rest of the year they usually were elsewhere.
It was the thing.

Business of importance sent Mr. Propbridge to Detroit, and then on to
Chicago and Des Moines. On a certain afternoon he caught the Wolverine
Limited. Almost before his train had passed One Hundred and Twenty-fifth
Street Mrs. Propbridge had a caller. She was informed that a member of
the staff of that live paper, People You Know, desired to see her for a
few minutes. Persons of social consequence or persons who craved to be
of social consequence did not often deny themselves to representatives
of People You Know. Mrs. Propbridge told the switchboard girl downstairs
to tell the hallman to invite the gentleman to come up.

He proved to be a somewhat older man than she had expected to see. He
was well dressed enough, but about him was something hard and
forbidding, almost formidable in fact. Yet there was a soothing,
conciliatory tone in his voice when he spoke.

"Mrs. Propbridge," he began, "my name is Townsend. I am one of the
editors of People You Know. I might have sent one of our reporters to
see you, but in a matter so important--and so delicate as this one is--I
felt it would be better if I came personally to have a little talk with
you and get your side of the affair for publication."

"My side of what affair?" she asked, puzzled.

He lifted one lip in a cornerwise smile.

"Let me give you a little advice, Mrs. Propbridge," he said. "I've had a
lot of experience in such matters as these. The interested parties will
be better off if they're perfectly frank in talking to the press. Then
all misunderstandings are avoided and everybody gets a fair deal in
print. Don't you agree with me that I am right?"

"You may be right," she said, "but I haven't the least idea what you are
talking about."

"I mean your trouble with your husband--if you force me to speak
plainly; I'd like t