ist, Dave," she told me, "you can go and buy him a
rubber elephant or some such thing, but he is altogether too young to
play games. I know you have a sneaking desire to teach him checkers. If
you will persist in wasting your money on presents, give me a
five-dollar bill and I'll go around and buy him things he really needs.
I'll put them in a box and send them with your best love."

"What about Frances?" I asked.

"A good pair of stout boots would be wisest," she informed me, "but
perhaps you had better make it flowers, after all. More useful things
might remind her too much of present hardship and poverty. A few
American Beauties will give her, with their blessed fragrance, some
temporary illusion of not being among the disinherited ones of the
earth. I--I can give her the boots."

And so we had that dinner, just the three of us together, with Baby Paul
just as good as gold and resting on Frieda's sofa. There was a box of
candy sent by Kid Sullivan to his benefactress, and, although the
contents looked positively poisonous, they came from a grateful heart,
and she appreciated them hugely. I had brought a little present of
flowers in a tiny silver vase, and they graced the table. I wore a
terrible necktie Frieda had presented me with. It was a splendid
refection.

The little dining-room was a thing of delight. From the walls hung many
pictures, mostly unframed. They were sketches and impressions that had
met favor from their gifted maker and been deemed worthy of the place.
The table was covered with a lovely white cloth, all filmy with lace,
and there was no lack of pretty silver things holding bonbons and buds.
It all gave me a feeling of womanly refinement, of taste mingled with
the freedom of an artistic temperament unrestrained by common metes and
bounds.

Frances had one of my roses pinned to her waist, and often bent down to
inhale its fragrance. When will some profound writer give us an essay on
the Indispensability of the Superfluous?

Again we had a feast on New Year's eve, in my room. Gordon, who was
going to a house-party at Lakewood, lent me his chafing-dish. I'll say
little about the viands we concocted; at least they were flavored with
affection and mutual good wishes, with the heartiest hopes for good
things to come. It was not very cold, that night, and on the stroke of
twelve I threw my window wide open. We listened to the orgy of sound
from steam-whistles and tin horns. There floated to us, th