o me, Goldie!" Fieldstone began,
just as Ralph and Mrs. Fieldstone came through the revolving doors. "I
don't want you to think I'm small, see? And if you say you must have
it, why, I'll give it to you." He leaned forward and smiled affably at
her. "After the thirtieth week!" he concluded in seductive tones.

"Right from the day we open!" Miss Raymond said, tapping the tablecloth
with her fingertips.

"Now, sweetheart," Fieldstone began, as he seized her hand and squeezed
it affectionately, "you know as well as I do when I say a thing I mean
it, because----"

And it was here that Mrs. Fieldstone, losing all control of herself and
all remembrance of Ralph's admonition, took the aisle in as few leaps
as her fashionable skirt permitted and brought up heavily against her
husband's table.

"Jake!" she cried hysterically. "Jake, what is this?"

Fieldstone dropped Miss Raymond's hand and jumped out of his chair.

"Why, mommer!" he exclaimed. "What's the matter? Is the children sick?"

He caught her by the arm, but she shook him off and turned
threateningly to Miss Raymond.

"You hussy, you!" she said. "What do you mean by it?"

Miss Goldie Raymond stood up and glared at Mrs. Fieldstone.

"Hussy yourself!" she said. "Who are you calling a hussy? Mont, are you
going to stand there and hear me called a hussy?"

Fieldstone paid no attention to this demand. He was clawing
affectionately at his wife's arm and repeating, "Listen, mommer!
Listen!" in anguished protest.

"I would call you what I please!" Mrs. Fieldstone panted. "I would call
you worser yet; and----"

Miss Raymond, however, decided to wait no longer for a champion; and,
as the sporting writers would say, she headed a left swing for Mrs.
Fieldstone's chin. But it never landed, because two vigorous arms,
newly whitened with an emulsion of zinc oxide, were thrown round her
waist and she was dragged back into her chair.

"Don't you dare touch that lady, Goldie Raymond!" said a voice that can
only be described as clear and vibrant, despite the speaker's recent
exhausting solo in the second act of "Rudolph Where Have You Been."
"Don't you dare touch that lady, or I'll lift the face off you!"

Miss Raymond was no sooner seated, however, than she sprang up again
and with one begemmed hand secured a firm hold on the bird of paradise
in Miss Vivian Haig's hat.

"No one can make a mum out of me!" she proclaimed, and at once closed
with her adversary.

Simulta