e it's
about the only thing you can give a man."

_Aggie_: "Minnie thought of it and I chose it. Blue, because it's his
color. Try it on, Clarence, and if it's too long--"

_Mrs. Fountain_: "Yes, do, dear! Let's see you with it on." While the
girls are fussily opening the robe, she manages to push her brother's
gift behind the door. Then, without looking round at her husband. "It
isn't a bit too long. Just the very--" Looking: "Well, it can easily
be taken up at the hem. I can do it to-morrow." She abandons him to
his awkward isolation while she chatters on with his sisters. "Sit
down; I insist! Don't think of going. Did you see that frightful pack
of people when the cab horse fell down in front of Shumaker's?"

_Minnie_: "See it?"

_Aggie_: "We were in the midst of it! I wonder we ever got out alive.
It's enough to make you wish never to see another Christmas as long as
you live."

_Minnie_: "A great many _won't_ live. There will be more grippe, and
more pneumonia, and more appendicitis from those jams of people in the
stores!"

_Aggie_: "The germs must have been swarming."

_Fountain_: "Lucy was black with them when we got home."

_Mrs. Fountain_: "Don't pay the slightest attention to him, girls.
He'll probably be the first to sneeze himself."

_Minnie_: "I don't know about sneezing. I shall only be too glad if I
don't have nervous prostration from it."

_Aggie_: "I'm glad we got our motor-car just in time. Any one that
goes in the trolleys now will take their life in their hand." The
girls rise and move toward the door. "Well, we must go on now. We're
making a regular round; you can't trust the delivery wagons at a time
like this. Good-by. Merry Christmas to the children. They're fast
asleep by this time, I suppose."

_Minnie_: "I only wish _I_ was!"

_Mrs. Fountain_: "I believe you, Minnie. Good-by. Good night. Good
night, Aggie. Clarence, go to the elevator with them! Or no, he can't
in that ridiculous bath-gown!" Turning to Fountain as the door closes:
"Now I've done it."

V

MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN

_Fountain_: "It isn't a thing you could have wished to phrase that
way, exactly."

_Mrs. Fountain_: "And you made me do it. Never thanking them, or
anything, and standing there like I don't know what, and leaving the
talk all to me. And now, making me lose my temper again, when I wanted
to be so nice to you. Well, it is no use trying, and