guests.
And after every stop there ensued a shifting of passengers in the
taxicabs, until Neville found himself occupying the rear taxi in the
procession accompanied by a lively young lady in pink silk and
swansdown--a piquant face and pretty figure, white and smooth and
inclined to a plumpness so far successfully contended with by her corset
maker.

"I have on my very oldest gown," she explained with violet-eyed
animation, patting her freshly dressed hair with two smooth little hands
loaded with diamonds and turquoises. "I'm afraid somebody will start
something and then they'll throw confetti, and somebody will think it's
funny to aim champagne corks at you. So I've come prepared," she added,
looking up at him with a challenge to deny her beauty. "By the way," she
said, "I'm Mazie Gray. Nobody had the civility to tell you, did they?"

"They said something.... I'm Louis Neville," he replied, smiling.

"Are you?" she laughed. "Well, you may take it from mother that you're
as cute as your name, Louis. Who was it they had all framed up to give
me my cues? That big Burleson gentleman who'd starve if he had to laugh
for a living, wasn't it? Can you laugh, child?"

"A few, Mazie. It is my only Sunday accomplishment."

"Dearie," she added, correcting him.

"It is my only accomplishment, dearie."

"That will be about all--for a beginning!" She laughed as the cab
stopped at the red awning and Neville aided her to descend.

Steps, vestibules, stairs, cloak-rooms were crowded with jolly,
clamouring throngs flourishing horns, canes, rattles, and dusters decked
with brilliant ribbons. Already some bore marks of premature encounters
with confetti and cocktails.

Waiters and head-waiters went gliding and scurrying about, assigning
guests to tables reserved months in advance. Pages in flame-coloured and
gold uniforms lifted the silken rope that stretched its barrier between
the impatient crowd and the tables; managers verified offered
credentials and escorted laughing parties to spaces bespoken.

Two orchestras, relieving each other, fiddled and tooted continuously;
great mounds of flowers, smilax, ropes of evergreens, multi-tinted
electroliers made the vast salon gay and filled it with perfume.

Even in the beginning it was lively enough though not yet boisterous in
the city where all New York was dining and preparing for eventualities;
the eventualities being that noisy mid-winter madness which seizes the
metropolis when