expensive quality, heavy with jets which
hung and shone, and jangled from every available point of her person.
Not a thread of her yellow hair was misplaced. She shone with
cleanliness, and her broad expressionless face and meaningless blue
eyes were set to a good-humored readiness for laughter, which would be
wholesome if not musical. She exhaled a fragrance of patchouly or
jockey-club, or something odorous and "strong" that clung to every
article of her apparel, even to the yellow kid gloves which she would
now be forced to put on during her ride in the car. Mrs. Dawson,
attired with equal richness and style, showed more of individuality in
her toilet.

As they quitted the house she observed to her friend:

"I wish you'd let up on that smell; it's enough to sicken a body."

"I know you don't like it, Lou," was Mrs. Worthington's apologetic and
half disconcerted reply, "and I was careful as could be. Give you my
word, I didn't think you could notice it."

"Notice it? Gee!" responded Mrs. Dawson.

These were two ladies of elegant leisure, the conditions of whose
lives, and the amiability of whose husbands, had enabled them to
develop into finished and professional time-killers.

Their intimacy with each other, as also their close acquaintance with
Fanny Larimore, dated from a couple of years after that lady's
marriage, when they had met as occupants of the same big up-town
boarding house. The intercourse had never since been permitted to die
out. Once, when the two former ladies were on a visit to Mrs.
Larimore, seeing the flats in course of construction, they were at
once assailed with the desire to abandon their hitherto nomadic life,
and settle to the responsibilities of housekeeping; a scheme which
they carried into effect as soon as the houses became habitable.

There was a Mr. Lorenzo Worthington; a gentleman employed for many
years past in the custom house. Whether he had been overlooked, which
his small unobtrusive, narrow-chested person made possible--or whether
his many-sided usefulness had rendered him in a manner indispensable
to his employers, does not appear; but he had remained at his post
during the various changes of administration that had gone by since
his first appointment.

During intervals of his work--intervals often occurring of afternoon
hours, when he had been given night work--he was fond of sitting at
the sunny kitchen window, with his long thin nose, and shortsighted
eyes plunged