ne in the second act and investigate the room heavily, looking for a
clue, you see. I have a theory that the little maid is the thief, and
when you come in, as you do when I have said 'Ha, it is a match box,' I
explain to you that----"

"Oh, dear, I haven't any idea what I'm to do."

"Well, you just go in and wave your fan disconsolately, and I'll do the
rest. It will be dreadful, of course, but then, no one ever expects them
to be otherwise. Now I think the best way is for us to run over it, and
then little things will come to you."

VI

Downstairs the Dean and Mrs. Norris had begun receiving their guests,
most of the receiving being done by the Dean. His wife, whose trail was
like that of a runaway astral body, was here, there, and everywhere,
calling, ordering, laughing.

The Misses Forbes, invariably the first comers, had taken possession of
front-row seats. This year Miss Edith had the Burnham lace--an heirloom
whose glory could on no account be dimmed by a tri-partite division--and
Miss Annie had the Burnham pearls. They were a modest string, perhaps,
but they lived on after more spectacular ones became gummy. As for Miss
Jennie, the youngest, aged sixty-five, she was something of a
philosopher, being the community's sole theosophist, and she regarded
her sisters' pleasure in their baubles with amusement. Nor could she be
drawn into a discussion of their ultimate disposition, a nice problem,
for other Burnhams and Forbeses were there none. "Why not give them to
the museum?" she had once suggested, to the sorrow of her sisters, who
hated to see her cynical side. Worse than that, she was a radical and
had boldly come out for the open shop, or the closed shop, whichever was
the radical one, and she talked very wildly indeed of Unions and
Compensation Bills.

Miss Elfrida Balch had arrived, and likewise her brother, the artist.
Miss Balch was a lady of almost crystalline refinement. She was tall and
fair, with a delicacy of complexion that stood in no need of retailed
bloom. She might have passed for the daughter of a kindly old Saxon
chieftain--it was, indeed, generally known that she sprang from the seed
of Saxon kings--who, firm in the belief that no young man was her equal
in birth or behaviour, had insisted upon her declining into a
spinsterhood which increased in refinement as it did in service.
Sentimental persons held that she came by that manner from association
with Art in her brother's studio