ould be pot
roast, a salad flavored with a dressing warranted not to crack or
injure the leather, stewed rhubarb and the bottle of strawberry
marmalade blushing at the certificate of chemical purity on its
label. After dinner Katy would show him the new patch in her crazy
quilt that the iceman had cut for her off the end of his four-in-hand.
At half-past seven they would spread newspapers over the furniture
to catch the pieces of plastering that fell when the fat man in the
flat overhead began to take his physical culture exercises. Exactly
at eight Hickey & Mooney, of the vaudeville team (unbooked) in the
flat across the hall, would yield to the gentle influence of delirium
tremens and begin to overturn chairs under the delusion that
Hammerstein was pursuing them with a five-hundred-dollar-a-week
contract. Then the gent at the window across the air-shaft would get
out his flute; the nightly gas leak would steal forth to frolic in
the highways; the dumbwaiter would slip off its trolley; the janitor
would drive Mrs. Zanowitski's five children once more across the
Yalu, the lady with the champagne shoes and the Skye terrier would
trip downstairs and paste her Thursday name over her bell and
letter-box--and the evening routine of the Frogmore flats would be
under way.

John Perkins knew these things would happen. And he knew that at a
quarter past eight he would summon his nerve and reach for his hat,
and that his wife would deliver this speech in a querulous tone:

"Now, where are you going, I'd like to know, John Perkins?"

"Thought I'd drop up to McCloskey's," he would answer, "and play a
game or two of pool with the fellows."

Of late such had been John Perkins's habit. At ten or eleven he
would return. Sometimes Katy would be asleep; sometimes waiting up,
ready to melt in the crucible of her ire a little more gold plating
from the wrought steel chains of matrimony. For these things Cupid
will have to answer when he stands at the bar of justice with his
victims from the Frogmore flats.

To-night John Perkins encountered a tremendous upheaval of the
commonplace when he reached his door. No Katy was there with her
affectionate, confectionate kiss. The three rooms seemed in
portentous disorder. All about lay her things in confusion. Shoes in
the middle of the floor, curling tongs, hair bows, kimonos, powder
box, jumbled together on dresser and chairs--this was not Katy's
way. With a sinking heart John saw the comb