for Eddie
Pierce to be out in front with his hack. While we was waiting for Eddie
it occurs to Alonzo to telephone his wife. He come back very solemn and
says: 'I told her I wouldn't be home to dinner because I was hungry and
there probably wouldn't be enough meat, what with a vegetarian poet in
the house. I told her I should sink to the level of a brute in the night
life of our gay little city. I said I was a wayward child of Nature
myself if you come right down to it.'

"'Good for you,' I says, having got word that Eddie is outside with his
hack. 'And now for the open road!' 'Fine!' says Alonzo. 'My spirit is
certainly feeling very untamed, like some poet's!' So I hustled 'em out
and into the four wheeler. Then I give Eddie Pierce private
instructions. 'Get 'em out into the hills about four miles,' I says,
'out past the Catholic burying ground, then make an excuse that your
hack has broke down, and as soon as they set foot to the ground have
them skates of yours run away. Pay no attention whatever to their
pleadings or their profane threats, only yelling to 'em that you'll be
back as soon as possible. But don't go back. They'll wait an hour or so,
then walk. And they need to walk.'

"'You said something there,' says Eddie, glancing back at 'em. Ben
Sutton was trying to cheer Alonzo up by reminding him of the Christmas
night they went to sleep in the steam room of the Turkish bath at Nome,
and the man forgot 'em and shut off the steam and they froze to the
benches and had to be chiselled off. And Eddie trotted off with his
load. You'd ought to seen the way the hack sagged down on Ben's side.
And I felt that I had done a good work, so I hurried home to get a bite
to eat and dress and make the party, which I still felt would be a good
party even if the husband of our hostess was among the killed or
missing.

"I reached the clubhouse at eight o'clock of that beautiful June
evening, to find the party already well assembled on the piazza and the
front steps or strolling about the lawn, about eight or ten of our
prominent society matrons and near as many husbands. And mebbe those
dames hadn't lingered before their mirrors for final touches! Mrs.
Martingale had on all her rings and the jade bracelet and the art-craft
necklace with amethysts, and Mrs. Judge Ballard had done her hair a new
way, and Beryl Mae Macomber, there with her aunt, not only had a new
scarf with silver stars over her frail young shoulders and a band of