going to motor down to
Sheepshead for the indoor polo-match. Come, ma."

"No, no, Felix. I want for myself rest this afternoon. All you children
go and have your good times. I got home more as I can do, and maybe
company, too."

"Tell you what, ma, come with Dora and me and the kids. She wants to go
out to Hastings this afternoon to see her mother. Come with us, ma. The
drive will do you good."

"No, no, Izzy. When I ride too much in the cold right away up in my ribs
comes the sciatica again."

Miss Meyerburg bent radiant over her parent. "Mother," she whispered,
her throat lined with the fur of tenderness, "it's reception-day out at
that club, and all the cliques will be there, and I want--"

"Sure, Becky, you and the marquis should drive out. Take the big car,
but tell James he shouldn't be so careless driving by them curves out
there by the golf-links."

"But, ma dear, you come, too, and--"

"No, no, Becky; to-day I got not time."

"But, ma--ma, you ain't mad at me, dear? You can see now for yourself,
can't you, dear, what a big thing it is for the family and how you--"

"Yes, yes, Becky. Look, go over by your young man. See how he stands
there and not one word what Ben is hollering so at him can he
understand."

Across the room, alongside a buffet wrought out of the powerful Jacobean
period, Mr. Ben Meyerburg threw a violent contortion.

"Want to go up in the Turkish room and smoke?" he shouted, the
apoplectic purple of exertion rushing into his face and round to the
roll of flesh overhanging the rear of his collar.

_"Pardon?"_

"Smoke? Do you smoke? Smokez-vous? Cigarez-vous? See, like this. Fume.
Blow. Do you smoke? Smokez-vous?"

_"Pardon?"_ said the marquis, bowing low.

* * * * *

In the heavy solitude of Mrs. Meyerburg's bedchamber, the buzz of
departures over, silence lay resumed, but with a singing quality to it
as if an echo or so still lingered.

Before the plain deal table, and at her side two files bulging their
contents, Mrs. Meyerburg sat with her spatulate finger conning in among
a page of figures. After a while the finger ceased to move across the
page, but lay passive midway down a column. After another while she
slapped shut the book and took to roaming up and down the large room
as if she there found respite from the spirit of her which nagged and
carped. Peering out between the heavy curtains, she could see the tide
of the Avenue mincing, pr