nd caught a pile of trout--and we had them for breakfast the next
morning! The best joke of all is that Chappie vows they were so full
they couldn't fish, and that the trout were caught with nets! Poor
Bertie--somebody'll have to separate him from that decanter now!"

From the hall there came loud laughter, with sounds of scuffling, and
cries, "Let me have it!"--"That's Baby de Mille," said Miss Wyman.
"She's always wanting to rough-house it. Robbie was mad the last time
she was down here; she got to throwing sofa-cushions, and upset a vase."

"Isn't that supposed to be good form?" asked Montague.

"Not at Robbie's," said she. "Have you had a chance to talk with Robbie
yet? You'll like him--he's serious, like you."

"What's he serious about?"

"About spending his money," said Betty. "That's the only thing he has
to be serious about."

"Has he got so very much?"

"Thirty or forty millions," she replied; "but then, you see, a lot of
it's in the inner companies of his railroad system, and it pays him
fabulously. And his wife has money, too--she was a Miss Mason, you
know, her father's one of the steel crowd. We've a saying that there
are millionaires, and then multi-millionaires, and then Pittsburg
millionaires. Anyhow, the two of them spend all their income in
entertaining. It's Robbie's fad to play the perfect host--he likes to
have lots of people round him. He does put up good times--only he's so
very important about it, and he has so many ideas of what is proper! I
guess most of his set would rather go to Mrs. Jack Warden's any day;
I'd be there to-night, if it hadn't been for Ollie."

"Who's Mrs. Jack Warden?" asked Montague.

"Haven't you ever heard of her?" said Betty. "She used to be Mrs. van
Ambridge, and then she got a divorce and married Warden, the big lumber
man. She used to give 'boy and girl' parties, in the English fashion;
and when we went there we'd do as we please--play tag all over the
house, and have pillow-fights, and ransack the closets and get up
masquerades! Mrs. Warden's as good-natured as an old cow. You'll meet
her sometime--only don't you let her fool you with those soft eyes of
hers. You'll find she doesn't mean it; it's just that she likes to have
handsome men hanging round her."

At one o'clock a few of Robbie's guests went to bed, Montague among
them. He left two tables of bridge fiends sitting immobile, the women
with flushed faces and feverish hands, and the men with cigarettes