e you're going to the Howard Tates' party?"

"No, I tell you; I'm sick of 'em."

"Well," said Macy consolingly, "the Tates' is just for college kids
anyway."

"I tell you--"

"I thought you'd be going to one of 'em anyways. I see by the papers
you haven't missed a one this Christmas."

"Hm," grunted Perry morosely.

He would never go to any more parties. Classical phrases played in
his mind--that side of his life was closed, closed. Now when a man
says "closed, closed" like that, you can be pretty sure that some
woman has double-closed him, so to speak. Perry was also thinking
that other classical thought, about how cowardly suicide is. A noble
thought that one--warm and uplifting. Think of all the fine men we
should lose if suicide were not so cowardly!

An hour later was six o'clock, and Perry had lost all resemblance to
the young man in the liniment advertisement. He looked like a rough
draft fur a riotous cartoon. They were singing--an impromptu song of
Baily's improvisation:

_One Lump Perry, the parlour snake,
Famous through the city for the way he drinks his tea;
Plays with it, toys with it,
Makes no noise with it,
Balanced on a napkin on his well-trained knee_.

"Trouble is," said Perry, who had just banged his hair with Bailey's
comb and was tying an orange tie round it to get the effect of
Julius Caesar, "that you fellas can't sing worth a damn. Soon's I
leave th' air an' start singin' tenor you start singin' tenor too."

"'M a natural tenor," said Macy gravely. "Voice lacks cultivation,
tha's all. Gotta natural voice, m'aunt used say. Naturally good
singer."

"Singers, singers, all good singers," remarked Baily, who was at the
telephone. "No, not the cabaret; I want night clerk. I mean
refreshment clerk or some dog-gone clerk 'at's got food--food! I
want----"

"Julius Caesar," announced Perry, turning round from the mirror.
"Man of iron will and stern 'termination."

"Shut up!" yelled Baily. "Say, iss Mr. Baily. Sen' up enormous supper.
Use y'own judgment. Right away."

He connected the receiver and the hook with some difficulty and then
with his lips closed and an air of solemn intensity in his eyes went
to the lower drawer of his dresser and pulled it open.

"Lookit!" he commanded. In his hands he held a truncated garment of
pink gingham.

"Pants," he explained gravely. "Lookit!" This was a pink blouse, a
red tie and a Buster Brown collar.

"Lookit!" he repeated. "Cos