that
kitchen.

But Mrs. Severance saved him the bother.

"If you would be so kind?" she said simply. "It's in the small
cupboard---the brown one--Sargent, you have the key?"

"Oh, yes, Rose." Mr. Piper was looking, Oliver thought, rather more
embarrassed than it was fair for any man to have to look and live.
His eyes kept going pitifully and always to Mrs. Severance and then
creeping, away. He produced the key, however, and gave it to Oliver
silently and Oliver took the first opportunity when he was through the
curtains of giving whatever fates had presided over the insanities of
the evening a long cheer with nine Mrs. Severances on the end.

He carefully stayed in the kitchen fifteen minutes--devoting most of
the time to a cautious examination of Ted, who seemed to be gradually
recovering consciousness. At least he stirred a little when poked by
Oliver's foot.

"Sleeps just like a baby--oh, the sweet little fellow--the dear little
fellow--" hummed Oliver wildly as he made a few last additions to the
curious network of string and towels with which he had wound Ted
into the fire-escape as if he had been making him a cocoon.
"Well--well--_well_--what a night we're having! What a night we're
having and what _will_ we have next?" Then he remembered the reason for
his journey and removed a bottle of brandy from the brown cup-board,
found appropriate glasses and, in the ice-chest, club-soda and ginger
ale. He poured himself a drink reminiscent of Paris--not that he felt
he needed it for the reaction from bracing himself to die like a Pythias
had left him elvishly grotesque in mind--gathered the bottles tenderly
in his arms like small glass babies and went back to the living-room.

XLI

And this time he was forced to pay internal high compliment to Mr. Piper
as well as to Mrs. Severance. The pitiful grey image, its knees rumpled
from the floor, its features streaked like a cheap paper mask with
ludicrous dreadful tears, had turned back into the President of the
Commercial Bank with branches in Bombay and Melbourne and all the
business-capitals of the world. Not that Mr. Piper was at ease again,
exactly--to be at ease under the circumstances would merely have proved
him brightly inhuman--but he looked as Oliver thought he might have
on one of the Street's Black Mondays when only complete firmness and
complete audacity in one could keep even the Commercial afloat at a time
when the Stock Exchange had turned into a