"Belladonna. Besides, I always forget the good ones
I read in the comic section."

"Please!" insists Betty. "Every one else is being so stupid. And you're
supposed to entertain me, you know."

"Well," says I, "I did hear kind of a rich one while I was waitin' at
the club for Mr. Robert today only I don't know as----"

"Listen, everybody," announces Betty vivacious. "Torchy is going to tell
a story."

Course, that gets me pinked up like the candle shades and I shakes my
head vigorous.

"Hear, hear!" says Mr. Robert.

"Oh, do!" adds Mrs. Ellins.

As for Vee, she looks across at me doubtful. "I hope it isn't that one
about a Mr. Cohen who played poker all night," says she.

"Wrong guess," says I. "It's one I overheard at Mr. Robert's club while
a bunch of young sports was comparin' notes on settin' hens."

"How do you mean, setting hens?" asks Mr. Robert.

"It's the favorite indoor sport up in New England now, I understand,"
says I. "It's the pie-belt way of taking the sting out of the
prohibition amendment. You know, building something with a kick to it. I
didn't get the details, but they use corn-meal, sugar, water, raisins
and the good old yeast cake, and let it set in a cask! for twenty-one
days. Nearly everybody up there has a hen on, I judge, or one just
coming off."

"Oh, I see!" says Mr. Robert. "And had any of the young men succeeded;
that is, in producing something with--er--a kick to it?"

"Accordin' to their tale, they had," says I. "Seems they tried it out
in Boston after the Harvard-Yale game. A bunch got together in some
hotel room and opened a jug one of 'em had brought along in case Harvard
should win, and after that 10-3 score--well, I expect they'd have
celebrated on something, even if it was no more than lemon extract or
Jamaica ginger."

"How about that, Nicky?" asks Mr. Robert, who's a Yale man.

"Quite possible," says Nicky, who for the first time seems to have his
ears pricked up. "What then?"

"Well," says I, "there was one Harvard guy who wasn't much used to
hitting anything of the sort, but he was so much cheered up over seeing
his team win that he let 'em lead him to it. They say he shut his eyes
and let four fingers in a water glass trickle down without stopping to
taste it. From then on he was a different man. He forgot all about being
a Delta Kappa, whatever that is; forgot that he had an aunt who still
lived on Beacon Street; forgot most everything except that the birds