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“But I know whom I wouldn't have dared to go to Colorado with! Mr. Dawson there! I'm sure he's a regular heart-breaker. When we were introduced he held my hand and squeezed it frightfully.”

“Haw! Haw! Haw!” The entire company applauded. Mr. Dawson was beatified. He had been called many things — loan-shark, skinflint, tightwad, pussyfoot — but he had never before been called a flirt.

“He is wicked, isn't he, Mrs. Dawson? Don't you have to lock him up?”

“Oh no, but maybe I better,” attempted Mrs. Dawson, a tint on her pallid face.

For fifteen minutes Carol kept it up. She asserted that she was going to stage a musical comedy, that she preferred cafe parfait to beefsteak, that she hoped Dr. Kennicott would never lose his ability to make love to charming women, and that she had a pair of gold stockings. They gaped for more. But she could not keep it up. She retired to a chair behind Sam Clark's bulk. The smile-wrinkles solemnly flattened out in the faces of all the other collaborators in having a party, and again they stood about hoping but not expecting to be amused.