roach ourselves with."

"Ya, ya, Becky."

Darkness fell thickly, like blue velvet portieres swinging together, and
stars sprang out in a clear sky.

They rocked in silence, their heads touching. The gray cat, with eyes
like opals, sprang into the hollow of Mr. Binswanger's arm.

"Billy, you come to sit by mamma and me? Ni-ce Bil-ly!"

"We go in now, papa; in the damp you get rheumatism."

"Ya, ya, Becky--hear how he purrs, like an engine."

"Come on, papa; damper every minute it gets."

He rose with his rheumatic jerkiness, placed the cat gently on all fours
on the floor, and closed his fingers around the curve of his wife's
outstretched arm.

"When--when we go--go to the city, Becky, we don't sublet Billy; we--we
take him with us, not, Becky?"

"Yes, papa."

"Ya, ya, Becky."

* * * * *

The chief sponsors for the family hotel are neurasthenia and bridge
whist, the inability of the homemaker and the debility of the
housekeeper.

Under these invasions Hestia turns out the gas-logs, pastes a To Let
sign on the windows, locks the front door behind her, and gives the key
to the auctioneer.

The family holds out the dining-room clock and a pair of silver
candlesticks that came over on the stupendously huge cargo which time
and curio dealers have piled upon the good ship _Mayflower_; engages a
three-room suite on the ninth floor of a European-plan hotel, and
inaugurates upon the sly American paradox of housekeeping in
non-housekeeping apartments.

The Wellington Hotel was a rococo haven for such refugees from the
modern social choler, and its doors flew open and offered them a family
rate, excellent cuisine, quarantine.

Excellent cuisine, however, is a clever but spiceless parody on home
cookery.

Mr. Binswanger read his evening menu with the furrow deepening between
his eyes.

"Such a soup they got! Mulla-ga-what?"

"'Shh-h-h, papa; mullagatawny! Rice soup."

"Mullagatawny! Fine mess!"

"'Shh-h-h, Julius; don't talk so loud. Does the whole dining-room got to
know you don't know nothing?"

Mrs. Binswanger took nervous resume of the red-and-gold, bright-lighted
dining-room.

"For a plate of noodles soup, Becky, they can have all their
mullagatawny! Fifteen cents for a plate of soup, Becky, and at home for
that you could make a whole pot full twice so good."

"'Sh-h-h-h, papa."

"Don't '_sh-h-h-h-h_ me no more neither, Pearlie. Five months, from
October to Fe