Jimmie remarked shamefacedly as he
added his contributions to the collection. "Thought we could keep it
for her, or throw it into the waste-basket or something. Anyhow I had
to get it."

"I guess everybody else got her something, too," Margaret said. "Of
course we will keep them for her. I got her a little French party
coat. It will be just as good next year as this. Anyhow as Jimmie
says, I had to get it."

"I got her slipper buckles," Gertrude admitted. "She has always wanted
them."

"I got her the Temple _Shakespeare_," Beulah added. "She was always
carrying around those big volumes."

"You're looking better, Beulah," Margaret said. "Are you feeling
better?"

"Jimmie says I'm looking more human. I guess perhaps that's it,--I'm
feeling more--human. I needed humanizing--even at the expense of
some--some heartbreak," she said bravely.

Margaret crossed the room to take a seat on Beulah's chair-arm, and
slipped an arm around her.

"You're all right if you know that," she whispered softly.

"I thought I was going to bring you Eleanor herself," Peter said. "I
got on the trail of a girl working in a candy shop out in Yonkers. My
faithful sleuth was sure it was Eleanor and I was ass enough to
believe he knew what he was talking about. When I got out there I
found a strawberry blonde with gold teeth."

"Gosh, you don't think she's doing anything like that," Jimmie
exclaimed.

"I don't know," Peter said miserably. He was looking ill and unlike
himself. His deep set gray eyes were sunken far in his head, his brow
was too white, and the skin drawn too tightly over his jaws. "As a
de-tec-i-tive, I'm afraid I'm a failure."

"We're all failures for that matter," David said. "Let's have
dinner."

Eleanor's empty place, set with the liqueur glass she always drank her
thimbleful of champagne in, and the throne chair from the drawing-room
in which she presided over the feasts given in her honor, was almost
too much for them. Margaret cried openly over her soup. Peter shaded
his eyes with his hand, and Gertrude and Jimmie groped for each
other's hands under the shelter of the table-cloth.

"This--this won't do," David said. He turned to Beulah on his left,
sitting immovable, with her eyes staring unseeingly into the
centerpiece of holly and mistletoe arranged by Alphonse so lovingly.
"We must either turn this into a kind of a wake, and kneel as we
feast, or we must try to rise above it somehow."

"I don't see why,"