drink. Sally, she said, as they sank into
the deep chairs, would be home directly and join them.

Presently, surely enough, some one ran up the front steps and came into
the wide hall, and Sally's voice called a blithe "Hello!" There was a
little rattle to show that her parasol was flung down, and then the
voice again, this time unmistakably impeded by hat-pins.

"Where's this fam-i-ly? Did the gentlemen come?"

This gave an opening for the sort of thing Ferdie thought he did very
well. He grinned at his guest, and raised a warning finger.

"Hello, Sally!" he called back. "Elsie and I are out here! Bates
couldn't come--operation last minute!"

"What--didn't come?" Sally called back after an instant's pause. "Well,
what has happened to HIM? But, thank goodness, now I can go to the
Bevis dinner to-morrow! Operation? I must say it's mannerly to send a
message the last minute like that!" She hummed a second, and then added
spitefully: "What can you expect of hair-tonic, anyway?" The frozen
group on the porch heard her start slowly upstairs. "Well, I might be
willing to marry him," added Sally, cheerfully, as she mounted, "but
it's a real relief to snatch this glorious afternoon from the burning!
Down in a second--keep me some tea!"

Nobody moved on the porch. The doctor's face was crimson, Elsie's kind
eyes wide with horror. Sally called a final reflection from the first
landing:

"Too bad not to have him see me looking so beautiful!" she sang
frivolously. "Operation--h'm! An important operation--I don't believe
it!"

She proceeded calmly to her room, and was buttoning herself into a trim
linen gown when Elsie burst in, flushed and furious, cast the baby
dramatically upon the bed, and hysterically recounted the effects of
her recent remarks. Sally, at first making a transparent effort to seem
amused, and following it with an equally vain attempt at being
dignified, finally became very angry herself.

"When Ferdie does things like this," said Sally, heatedly, "I declare I
wonder--I was going to say I wonder he has a friend left in the world!
As you say, it's done now, but it makes me so FURIOUS! And I don't
think it shows very much savior faire on your part, Elsie. However, we
won't discuss it! Ferdie will try one joke too many, one of these days,
and then--Now, look here, Elsie," Sally interrupted her tirade to state
with deadly deliberation, "unless that man goes home before dinner, as
a man of any spirit would