at the Syrinx Club--or rather at the
snowy portal--for there he collided with Samuel Strathclyde Ogilvy and
Henry Knickerbocker Annan, and was seized and compelled to perform with
them on the snowy sidewalk, a kind of round dance resembling a pow-wow,
which utterly scandalised the perfectly respectable club porter, and
immensely interested the chauffeurs of a row of taxicabs in waiting.

"Come! Let up! This isn't the most dignified performance I ever assisted
at," he protested.

"Who said it was dignified?" demanded Ogilvy. "We're not hunting for
dignity. Harry and I came here in a hurry to find an undignified
substitute for John Burleson. You're the man!"

"Certainly," said Annan, "you're the sort of cheerful ass we need in our
business. Come on! Some of these taxis belong to us--"

"Where do you want me to go, you crazy--"

"Now be nice, Louis," he said, soothingly; "play pretty and don't kick
and scream. Burleson was going with us to see the old year out at the
Cafe Gigolette, but he's got laryngitis or some similar species of
pip--"

"I don't want to go--"

"You've got to, dear friend. We've engaged a table for six--"

"Six!"

"Sure, dearie. In the college of experience coeducation is a necessary
evil. Step lively, son!"

"Who is going?"

[Illustration: "'Me lord, the taxi waits.'"]

"One dream, one vision, one hallucination--" he wafted three kisses
from his gloved finger tips in the general direction of Broadway--"and
you, and Samuel, and I. Me lord, the taxi waits!"

"Now, Harry, I'm not feeling particularly cheerful--"

"But you will, dear friend; you will soon be feeling the Fifty-seven
Varieties of cheerfulness. All kinds of society will be at the
Gigolette--good, bad, fashionable, semi-fashionable--all imbued with the
intellectual and commendable curiosity to see somebody 'start
something.' And," he added, modestly, "Sam and I are going to see what
can be accomplished--"

"No; I won't go--"

But they fell upon him and fairly slid him into a taxi, beckoning two
other similar vehicles to follow in procession.

"Now, dearie," simpered Sam, "don't you feel better?"

Neville laughed and smoothed out the nap of his top hat.

They made three stops at three imposing looking apartment hotels between
Sixth Avenue and Broadway--The Daisy, The Gwendolyn, The Sans
Souci--where negro porters and hallboys were gorgeously conspicuous and
the clerk at the desk seemed to be unusually popular with the