kling with delight. "It was easy,
too. I dragged in O'Valley's orphan-asylum days and all, and how we
both married diamonds in the rough. Woof, how she squirmed!" He rose
and went to the absurd little buffet, pouring out two glasses of "red
ink" and gulping down one of them. "I wish I had O'Valley's money; I'd
put away a houseful of this stuff. I'm going to dig up a few bottles
at the club--in case of illness." Trudy did not want her glass, so he
drank that as well.

"You take too much of that stuff," Trudy warned, gathering up her
debris; "and when you have taken too much you talk too much."

Gaylord rewarded her by consuming a third glass. "Shall we eat out?"

She shook her head. "Too expensive. There's no need for it now. I
bought some potato salad and I have canned pineapple and sugar
cookies."

She dumped her work into a basket and flew round the dining room until
she summoned Gaylord to join her in a meal laid out on the corner of a
dingy luncheon table.

The wine dulled Gay's appetite and Trudy's had been taken quite away
by Beatrice's proposed visit. Besides, they put the latest jazz record
on their little talking machine, which helped substitute for a decent
meal. They danced a little while and then Trudy planned what she
should wear for the O'Valley dinner party and Gaylord figured how much
money he needed before he would dare try buying an automobile, and
they finished the evening by attending the nine-o'clock movie
performance and buying fifteen cents' worth of lemon ice and two
sponge cakes to bring home as a piece de resistance.

* * * * *

Beatrice found herself amused instead of annoyed as she climbed the
stairs to the Vondeplosshe residence. At Trudy's request Gay had
discreetly consented to be absent. He had pretty well picked up the
threads of his various enterprises and what with his club duties, his
second-rate concerts, his gambling, and commissions from antique
dealers, he managed to put in what he termed a full day. So he swung
out of the house early in the afternoon to buy himself a new winter
outfit, wondering if Trudy would row when she discovered the fact.

Gaylord's theory of married life was "What's mine is my own, and
what's yours is mine." He relied on Trudy to mend his clothes and make
his neckties, keep house and manage with a laundress a half day a
week, yet always be as well dressed and pretty as when she had slacked
in the office an