ouldn't come? Now that's too
bad!" After a long stare, "You're some fleshier, ain't you, Carrie?"

A large woman in a tan-colored linen duster came slowly down the deck, a
camp-stool in either hand. Her portly advance was intercepted by Mrs.
Tuttle.

"Mis' Tinneray! Same as ever!"

Mrs. Tinneray dropped the camp-stools and adjusted her smoked glasses;
she gave a start and the two ladies embraced.

Mrs. Tuttle said that "it beat all," and Mrs. Tinneray said "she never!"

Mrs. Tuttle, emerged from the embrace, re-adjusting her hat with
many-ringed fingers, inquiring, "How's the folks?"

Up lumbered Mr. Tinneray, a large man with a chuckle and pale eyes, who
was introduced by the well-known formula, "Mis' Tuttle, Mr. Tinneray,
Mr. Tinneray, Mis' Tuttle."

The Tinnerays said, "So you brought the bird along, hey?" Then, without
warning, all conversation ceased. The _Fall of Rome_, steaming slowly
away from the pier, whistled a sodden whistle, the flags flapped, every
one realized that the excursion had really begun.

This excursion was one of the frank displays of human hopes, yearnings,
and vanities, that sometimes take place on steamboats. Feathers had a
hectic brilliancy that proved secret, dumb longings. Pendants known as
"lavaleers" hung from necks otherwise innocent of the costly fopperies
of Versailles. Old ladies clad in princess dresses with yachting caps
worn rakishly on their grey hair, vied with other old ladies in
automobile bonnets, who, with opera glasses, searched out the meaning of
every passing buoy. Young girls carrying "mesh-bags," that subtle
connotation of the feminine character, extracted tooth-picks from them
or searched for bits of chewing gum among their over scented treasures.

As it was an excursion, the _Fall of Rome_ carried a band and booths
laden with many delicious superfluities such as pop-corn and the
misleading compound known as "salt-water taffy." There were, besides,
the blue and red pennants that always go on excursions, and the yellow
and pink fly-flappers that always come home from them; also there were
stacks of whistle-whips and slender canes with ivory heads with little
holes pierced through. These canes were bought only by cynical young men
whose new straw hats were fastened to their persons by thin black
strings. Each young man, after purchasing an ivory-headed cane retired
to privacy to squint through it undisturbed. Emerging from this privacy
the young man would then