at her silly tea to-morrow
is a bang-up affair, with plenty of real guests."

I gasps.

"But, I say, Mr. Ellins," I begins, "how do I--"

"Don't ask me how, young man," he snaps. "What do I know about
tea-parties? Do as I tell you."

Say, that's some unique order to shoot at a private sec., ain't it?

And did I make good? Listen. Before nine o'clock that night I had the
thing all plotted out and half a dozen people gettin' busy. Course,
it's mostly Vee's program. She claps her hands when she hears the tale.

"Why, Torchy!" says she. "Isn't that just splendid! Certainly we can
do it."

And when Vee gets enthusiastic over anything it ain't any flash in the
pan. It's apt to be done, and done right. She tells me what to do
right off the reel. And you should have seen me blowin' that five
hundred like a drunken sailor. I charters a five-piece orchestra,
gives a rush order to a decorator, and engages a swell caterer, warnin'
Tessie by wire what to expect. Vee tackled the telephone work, and
with her aunt's help dug up about a dozen old families that remembered
the Bagstocks. How they hypnotized so many old dames to take a trip
'way downtown I don't know; but after Mrs. Tessie McCloud had watched
the fourth limousine unload from two to three classy-lookin' guests,
she near swallowed her gum.

"Muh Gawd!" says she. "Am I seein' things, or is it true?"

Not only dames, but a sprinklin' of old sports in spats and frock-coats
and with waxed white mustaches was rounded up; and, with five or six
debutantes Vee had got hold of, it's some crusty push.

First off Mrs. Bagstock had been so limp and unsteady on her pins that
she'd started in by receivin' 'em propped up in a big chair. But by
the time the old parlor got half full and the society chatter cuts
loose she seems to buck up a lot.

Next thing I knew, she was standin' as straight as a Fifth Avenue
doorman, her wrinkled old chin well up and her eyes shinin'. Honest,
she was just eatin' it up. Looked the part, too. A bit out of date as
to costume, maybe; but with her white hair piled up high and the
diamond-set combs in it, and a cameo as big as a door-knob at her
throat, and with that grand-duchess air of hers, hanged if she don't
carry it off great. Why, I heard her gossipin' with old Madam Van Pyle
as chummy and easy as if it had been only last week since they'd seen
each other, instead of near twenty years ago.

Havin' to pay off some of the