ms--"

"Oh!" shuddered Olivetta.

"Were you much hurt?" asked Mrs. De Peyster, for a moment forgetting
her reproving manner in her affectionate concern.

"Mother, with your love for old lace, you certainly would like the
openwork effect of my skin. But--the patient will recover."

"I trust this experience has been a lesson to you!" said Mrs. De
Peyster with returned severity.

"Oh, it has--a big lesson!" Jack heartily agreed.

"Then I trust you will do nothing of the kind again."

"I trust I won't have to!"

There was rather an odd quality in Jack's tone.

"Won't have to? What do you mean?"

"You've questioned me a lot, mother. I'd like to put a few leading
questions to you. And--u'm--alone. Olivetta," he remarked pleasantly,
"do you know that Sherlock Holmes found it an instructive and valuable
occupation to count the stair-steps in a house? Suppose you run out
for five minutes and count 'em. I'll bet you a box of--"

Olivetta had risen, somewhat indignantly.

"I never eat candy!"

"A box of hairpins," continued Jack, clumsily picking up one from the
floor, "that there aren't more than seventy-five."

"Oh, if you want me out of the way, all right!" said Olivetta,
sticking the pin into place.

"Here, is that your purse?" asked Jack, fishing an open purse from
beneath the chair Olivetta had just vacated.

"Yes, I'm always dropping it. I lost two--"

"I must say, Olivetta," put in Mrs. De Peyster reprovingly, "that you
really must not be so careless!"

Jack was looking at a card that had fallen from the purse.

"Hello! And a ticket to the exhibition of paintings of--"

"Give it to me!" And Olivetta, with suddenly crimson face, snatched
purse and card from Jack's hands. "I'll wait up in your bedroom,
Caroline, and look at your new gowns." And with a rapidity that
approached instantaneity she disappeared.

"Jack," his mother demanded suspiciously, "what was that card?"

"Just an old admission ticket to varnishing day at the spring exhibit
of the American Society of Painters," said Jack easily. And without
giving Mrs. De Peyster an instant in which to pursue the matter
further, he awkwardly pushed her favorite chair toward the fire to a
place beside his own. "Come sit down, mother. There's a lot of things
I want to tell you."

Mrs. De Peyster lowered herself into the chair. "Yes?"

Jack's eyes had meditatively followed Olivetta. "Do you know, mother,
that Olivetta would really be an awfully goo