was: "I never appreciated you before. Please don't feel
that telling me this will make any difference save that I'll stay
aloof--as you suggest. I can forget it, somewhat, if that will make
you feel any better about it. It is all quite true and equally
hopeless--true things usually are--and if you like I'll send you home
in the car, because you must be a trifle tired."

"Thank you," she remembered answering as she told Steve's chauffeur
where to drive.

"You look as tired as before we went away," Luke complained that same
night when Mary sat at her desk adding up expenses and making out
checks.

"Oh, no. This shade makes everyone look ghastly," she said.

"I'll have to get a hump on and make my pile," he consoled. "I don't
want my sister being all tired out before she's too old to have a good
time."

"A good time?" Mary repeated. "Are you inoculated, too?"

"What's wrong with a good time? I guess Steve O'Valley plays all he
likes!"

"Yes, dear, I guess he does," Mary forced herself to answer.

When Steve returned home that evening he found one of those impromptu
dinner parties on hand instead of a formal engagement. They had become
quite the fad in Bea's set. The idea was this--young matrons convened
in the afternoon at one of their homes for cocktails and confidences;
very likely Sezanne del Monte would drop in to read her last chapter
or Gay Vondeplosshe would arrive brandishing his cane and telling
everyone how beautiful the Italian villa was to be; and by and by they
would gather round the piano to sing the latest songs; then when the
clock struck six there would be a wild flutter and a suggestion:

"Let's phone cook to bring over our dinner. Then our husbands can come
along or not just as they like. We'll have a parlour picnic; and no
one will bother about being dressed. And we'll go to the nickel dance
hall later."

This was followed by a procession of cooks arriving in state in
various motor cars and carrying covered trays and vacuum bottles and
departing in high spirits at the early close of their day's work.
Then the procession of subdued husbands would follow, and conglomerate
menus would be spread on a series of tea tables throughout the rooms,
with Sezanne smoking her small amber-stemmed pipe and describing her
sojourn in a Turkish harem while Gay picked minor chords on his
ukulele. After a later diversion of nickel dance halls and slumming
the young matrons would say good-bye, preparing to slee