carried meaning to the
Cousin, for she flushed and nodded. Then she turned back to the flock,
who by this time, with touching unanimity, were showering devoted
attentions on the Aunt. At the elevator they were all graciously
dismissed except the Boston Lamb, who alone went down to put his
relatives into their cab.

"Come and see us, all of you," called the Cousin, cordially, as the
car began to descend.

"How soon?" begged the Albany Lamb, anxiously.

"Any time, after to-night," returned the Cousin, and was lowered from
their sight.

Then with one accord they fell upon the Goat, and bore him into the
apartment for condign punishment, regardless of his indignant
assertions of his right as a citizen to a trial by a jury of his
peers. When the Boston Lamb came leaping up the stairs to add his
weight to the balancing of accounts, he found a riotous crowd.

"Just because my luggage was derailed and burned up out in the Kansas
deserts," the Goat was saying, "and I struck New York in a suit of
hobo clothes from Topeka--oh, you fellows are easy marks!"

"Where are your Moravian grandparents?" demanded the Albany Lamb.

"Don't know," said the Goat, unfilially. "They died before I was born.
They weren't Moravians, anyway."

"See here!" The Boston Lamb jerked him to his feet with one hand and
assaulted him with the other. "What was that stuff you were reeling
off to my cousin? As her nearest male relative, geographically
speaking, I insist on an explanation."

"That was Japanese," said the Goat, with a grin, and immediately
favored the crowd with several more doubtfully emphatic remarks in the
same tongue.

"I pass!" said the Boston Lamb, meekly. "But one thing more. Are you
engaged to my cousin?"

"How very impertinent!" returned the Goat. "Why didn't you ask her?"

The Boston Lamb inserted four determined fingers between the Goat's
collar and the back of his neck, and in view of the attitude of mind
and body of the other Lambs, the Goat saw fit to yield.

"Not exactly, as yet," he admitted. "But to-night--I hope----"

"After which we are invited to call--oh, you brute!" groaned the
Albany Lamb, and started for him. But the Goat had pulled himself
loose, and gained the door. He stopped, however, to pull an oblong
package from his coat pocket.

"Here," he said, tossing it toward the crowd. "The smokes are on me
tonight. Sorry I can't be here to assist, for they're a distinct
advance on your husky old Chancello