re the tolls eat you out of house and
home."

"Oh, no! Please don't! Couldn't I have my way about such a little
matter, Hugo dear?"

In this glaring publicity, the dialogue began to take on something of
the nature of a "scene." Canning yielded with perfect grace.

"Of course you can, if you really prefer it. Well, then!... Hurry back."

"In two minutes," said she, with certainty; and smiled brightly into
mamma's censorious concern.

On the heels of the proud page, Cally threaded her way among the
glittering tables for the telephone and Jefferson 4127, unaware for once
that she was the cynosure of many eyes. She was buoyed within, thrilled
with a sense of strange adventure, baffling to analysis, but somehow
comparable to that soaring moment last week. She was captain of her
soul. That she was now standing by her flare-up, deliberately
reattaching herself to a past which she had moved heaven and earth to
cut away from her, did not occur to her, in just that way. But she was
conscious of a curious inner sense of freedom, and somehow of
fulfilment. And now she saw that she must have been secretly thinking of
doing this for some time, nibbling fearfully at the idea....

She was alone in a glass booth, with a telephone before her, receiver
off its hook. She sat down, put the receiver to her ear, and said:

"Hello?"

[Illustration: _PLEASE_ DON'T TROUBLE, HUGO]

There reached her only a faint great buzzing, the humming of distant
wires, fleeting snatches of talk a long way off, striking out of nowhere
back into nothing.... And now she was the Lady Bountiful, stepping
aside a moment from her brilliant entourage to scatter boons to the poor
and needy. Jack Dalhousie would know to-morrow morning, at the latest,
by the telegram from his friend Mr. V.V.,--as that little creature
called him,--and whatever vexation he might be inclined to feel towards
her at first, his joy and his father's would soon dispose of that. And
of course he would hurry straight off with his news to that girl from
the East he had fallen in love with--what a hand he was for affairs,
poor old Jack!--and....

Out of the confused murmuring, a soft voice spoke clearly:

"Hello, New York. I got your party. What's the matter?"

A nasal voice gave answer, apparently at Carlisle's elbow:

"Well, be ca'm, little one. You people got the rush-bug worsen some
full-size cities aintyer? Butt out and gimme a chanst. Hello! W'ere
arey'r, Bassadoors!"

"Here