s eve.

As Night drew on, Magic came stealing down the blurred highways. Lamps
became lanterns, shedding a muffled light, deepening and charging with
mystery the darkness beyond. Old friends grew unfamiliar. Where they had
stood, fantastic shapes loomed out of the mist and topless towers rose
up spectral to baffle memory. Perspective fled, shadow and stuff were
one, and, save where the radiance of the shops in some proud
thoroughfare made gaudy noon of evening, the streets of Town were
changed to echoing halls and long, dim, rambling galleries, hung all
with twinkling lights that stabbed the gloom but deep enough to show
their presence, as do the stars.

So, slowly and with a dazzling smile, London put on her cloak of
darkness. By eight o'clock you could not see two paces ahead.

On Wednesday morning the fog was denser than it had been the night
before. There was no sign of its abatement, not a puff of wind elbowed
its way through the yellow drift, and the cold was intense. The prospect
of leaving a comfortable home at nine in the evening to undertake a
journey of some two miles, clad in habiliments which, while highly
ornamental, were about as protective from cold as a grape-skin rug, was
anything but alluring.

For reasons of my own, however, I was determined to get to the Ball. My
sister, whom nothing daunted, and Jill, who was wild with excitement,
and had promised readily to reserve more dances than could possibly be
rendered, were equally firm. Jonah thought it a fool's game, and said as
much. Berry was of the same opinion, but expressed it less bluntly, and
much more offensively. After a long tirade--

"All right," he concluded. "You go. It's Lombard Street to a china
orange you'll never get there, and, if you do, you'll never get back.
None of the band'll turn up, and if you find twenty other fools in the
building to exchange colds with, you'll be lucky. To leave your home on
a night like this is fairly clamouring for the special brand of trouble
they keep for paralytic idiots. I've known you all too long to expect
sagacity, but the instinct of self-preservation characterizes even the
lower animals. What swine, for instance, would leave its cosy sty----"

"How dare you?" said Daphne. "Besides, you can't say 'its.' Swine's
plural."

"My reference was to the fever-swine," was the cold reply. "A singular
species. Comparable only with the deep-sea dip-sheep."

"I think you're very unkind," said Jill, poutin