t they might the more voluptuously
and sentimentally enjoy it when it came, they were permanently
interrupted by a twenty-minute phone call for Betty from a garrulous
aunt. At the end of eighteen minutes Perry Parkhurst, urged on by
pride and suspicion and injured dignity, put on his long fur coat,
picked up his light brown soft hat, and stalked out the door.

"It's all over," he muttered brokenly as he tried to jam his car into
first. "It's all over--if I have to choke you for an hour, damn you!".
The last to the car, which had been standing some time and was quite
cold.

He drove downtown--that is, he got into a snow rut that led him
downtown. He sat slouched down very low in his seat, much too
dispirited to care where he went.

In front of the Clarendon Hotel he was hailed from the sidewalk by a
bad man named Baily, who had big teeth and lived at the hotel and had
never been in love.

"Perry," said the bad man softly when the roadster drew up beside him
at the curb, "I've got six quarts of the doggonedest still champagne
you ever tasted. A third of it's yours, Perry, if you'll come
up-stairs and help Martin Macy and me drink it."

"Baily," said Perry tensely, "I'll drink your champagne. I'll drink
every drop of it, I don't care if it kills me."

"Shut up, you nut!" said the bad man gently. "They don't put wood
alcohol in champagne. This is the stuff that proves the world is more
than six thousand years old. It's so ancient that the cork is
petrified. You have to pull it with a stone drill."

"Take me up-stairs," said Perry moodily. "If that cork sees my heart
it'll fall out from pure mortification."

The room up-stairs was full of those innocent hotel pictures of little
girls eating apples and sitting in swings and talking to dogs. The
other decorations were neckties and a pink man reading a pink paper
devoted to ladies in pink tights.

"When you have to go into the highways and byways----" said the pink
man, looking reproachfully at Baily and Perry.

"Hello, Martin Macy," said Perry shortly, "where's this stone-age
champagne?"

"What's the rush? This isn't an operation, understand. This is a
party."

Perry sat down dully and looked disapprovingly at all the neckties.

Baily leisurely opened the door of a wardrobe and brought out six
handsome bottles.

"Take off that darn fur coat!" said Martin Macy to Perry. "Or maybe
you'd like to have us open all the windows."

"Give me champagne," said Perry.