er? There is no way in
which I can postpone or get out of the engagement, for there is no way
I can reach my friend before Sunday."

I had purposely avoided using the words "he" or "him," hoping that
Dicky would not say anything to betray the identity of the "friend"
who was returning from the wilds. But I reckoned without Dicky.
Either he was so angry that he recklessly disregarded Mrs. Underwood's
presence or else his friendship with her was so close that it did not
matter to him whether or not she knew of our differences.

"Oh, the gorilla with the mumps!" Dicky gave the short, scornful,
little laugh which I had learned to dread as one of the preliminaries
of a scene. "I had forgotten all about him. And so he really arrives
on Sunday, and you expect to welcome him. How very touching!"

Dicky was fast working himself into a rage. Lillian Gale evidently
knew the signs as well as I did, for she hurriedly began to fasten her
cloak, which she had opened on account of the heat of the room.

"I really must be going," she murmured, starting for the door, but
Dicky adroitly slipped between it and her.

"Talk about your romance, Lil," he sneered, "what do you think about
this one for a best seller?"

"Oh, Dicky!" I gasped, my cheeks scarlet with humiliation at this
scene before Mrs. Underwood, of all people. But Dicky paid no more
attention to me than if I had been the chair in which I was sitting.

"Beautiful highbrow heroine," he went on, "has tearful parting with
gallant hero more noted for his size than his beauty. He's gone a
whole year. Heroine forgets him, marries another man. Now he
comes back, heroine has to meet him and break the news that she is
another's. Isn't it romantic?"

Lillian looked at him steadily for a moment, as if she were debating
some course of action. Then she suddenly squared her shoulders,
and, advancing toward him, took him by the shoulders and shook him
slightly.

"Look here, my Dicky-bird," she said, and her tones were like icicles.
"I didn't want to listen to this, and I beg your wife's pardon for
being here, but now that you've compelled me to listen to you, you're
going to hear me for a little while."

Dicky looked at her open-mouthed, exactly like a small boy being
reproved by his mother.

"You're getting to be about the limit with this temper of yours," she
began. "Of course I know you were as spoiled a lad as anybody could
be, but that's no reason now that you are a man why y