Freshman tears, and the
awe-struck boy gently closed the door. And Cupid, with his wings folded
over his little arms, sat upon the bureau and laughed long and
cynically.

It was now past twelve o'clock. Church was over, and Dolores was
returning. Home-ward gently she rode with surging thoughts in her bosom,
and an expression of sweet, religious calm hovering over her straight
black brows. That was the Spanish of her. The moment the front door
closed behind her she sprinted for the telephone. That was the American
of her.

Had Papa Payson not been absorbed in the forty-eight-page Christmas
edition of the Los Angeles _Herald_, he might have overheard the
following semi-conversation:

"----"

"Main eight-double-eight."

"----"

"Yes."

"----"

"Is this the Westminster?"

"----"

"Will you--er--that is--did the Stanford Glee Club leave this morning?"

"----"

"Oh! Will you tell me, please, whether Mr. Cecil Van Dyke left with
them?"

"----"

"Oh, I'm so sorry! What's the matter?"

"----"

"Appendicitis!" The receiver dropped and swung against the wall. Dolores
had fled to mamma.

Perkins and Mason, treating each other at every station short of the
prohibition town of Pomona, would have felt less complacent over their
little joke had they seen the procession that left the Hotel Westminster
at one-thirty P. M. on that balmy Christmas day. The order of march, as
instituted by the American Dolores, was as follows:

1. The Payson carriage, with Mrs. and Miss Payson on the forward seat
and a tenderly wrapped Freshman on the other, and the coachman
instructed to drive gently.

2. Dr. Mead and the devoted bell-boy in a phaeton.

3. Small citizens on foot.

The doctor, obeying to the letter the orders of Perkins, who had
commanded him not to leave his patient for one moment, smiled broadly as
he gathered the lunatic into his arms and bore him past the fatal
poinsettia bushes and up the broad steps where the grave major-domo was
waiting to receive them. The scale upon which the Payson household was
conducted just suited the ideas of that worthy practitioner.

* * * * *

On Saturday, Perkins and Mason asked at the hotel for Van Dyke and the
doctor.

"They gave up their rooms last Monday, not very long after you left,"
said the clerk. "A lady took your friend to her house."

"Who was she?" asked Jimmy, with dark foreboding.

"A Mrs. Payson."

Perkins collapsed on