se
and satisfy one hungry man who liked good things to eat--and amplified as
much as possible in quantity after Anthony's message reached her. And by
that admirable collusion between hostess and feminine friend which can
sometimes be effected when the situation demands it, the dinner prepared
for three seemed ample for five.

[Illustration: "Three men, standing about the wide fireplace ... turned
expectantly as their youthful hostess came in, followed by a
graceful girl in gray."]

Between them Juliet and Rachel Redding served the various dishes and
changed the plates which Anthony handed from his place. It was gracefully
done and so simply that the absence of a maid was a thing to be enjoyed
rather than regretted. When Juliet, in the softly sweeping dull-red frock
which made of her a warm picture for a winter's night, slipped from her
chair and moved about the room, or brought in from the kitchen a steaming
dish, she seemed the ideal hostess, herself bestowing what her own hands
had prepared. And when Rachel Redding offered a man a cup of fragrant
coffee, smiling down in the general direction of his uplifted face without
meeting his eyes, there was certainly nothing lost from his enjoyment of
the beverage.

"Say, but this dinner has tasted just about right," was Wayne Carey's
satisfied observation as he leaned back in his chair at last, after
draining his third cup of coffee--and the pot itself, if he had but known
it.

"Went to the spot?" asked Anthony, leaning back also with the expression
of the friendly host. He was young to cultivate that expression, but he
appeared to find no difficulty about it.

"It did--every last mouthful."

"Good. Now, if you fellows will come back to the fire and have a pipeful
of talk we shall not be missed. In this house on ordinary occasions we
reverse the order of after-dinner privileges--the men retire to the
atmosphere of the sofa-pillows, and the women--I'm not allowed to tell
what they do. But after remaining discreetly out of sight for some little
time, during which faint sounds as of the rattle of china penetrate
through closed doors, they reappear, pleasantly flushed and full of a sort
of relieved joy."

"I know what I wish," said Roger Barnes, looking back from the dining-room
doorway at young Mrs. Robeson; "I wish that when the dishes are all ready
you would let me know. I should like nothing better than to have a
dish-towel at them. I know all about it--my mother taug