On an occasion Web had wired her from Chicago that he couldn’t get home for a certain charity concert which she had initiated and suggested that she commandeer Wrong Number as an escort; and as no other man of her acquaintance was able or willing to represent the shirking Webster, she did in fact utilize Wrong Number. She was obliged to confess that he had been of the greatest assistance to her and that but for his prompt and vigorous action the programmes, which had not been delivered at the music hall, would never have been recovered from the theatre to which an erring messenger had carried them. Wrong Number, arrayed in evening dress, had handed her in and out of her box and made himself agreeable to three other wives of tired business men who loathed concerts and pleaded important business engagements whenever their peace was menaced by classical music. Mrs. Burgess’s bitterness toward Webster for his unaccountable interest in Wrong Number was abated somewhat by these circumstances though she concealed the fact and berated him for his desertion in an hour of need. Webster G. Burgess was enormously entertained by his wife’s social and philanthropic enterprises and he was proud of her ability to manage things. Their two children were away at school and at such times as they dined alone at home the table was the freest confessional for her activities. She never understood why Webster evinced so much greater interest and pleasure in her reports of the warring factions than in affairs that moved smoothly under her supreme direction. “You know, Web,” she began on an evening during the progress of the Great War, after watching her spouse thrust his fork with satisfaction into a pudding she had always found successful in winning him to an amiable mood; “you know, Web, that Mrs. Gurley hasn’t the slightest sense of fitness,--no tact,--no delicacy!” “You’ve hinted as much before,” said Webster placidly. “Cleaned you up in a club election?” “Web!” ejaculated Mrs. Burgess disdainfully. “You know perfectly well she was completely snowed under at the Women’s Civic League election. Do you think after all I did to start that movement I’d let such a woman take the presidency away from me? It isn’t that I _cared_ for it; heaven knows I’ve got enough to do without that!” “Right!” affirmed Burgess readily. “But what’s she put over on you now?” Mrs. Burgess lifted her head quickly from a scrutiny of the percolator flame. “Put over! Don’t you think I give her any chance to put anything over! I wouldn’t have her _think_ for a minute that she was in any sense a _rival_.” “No; nothing vulgar and common like that,” agreed Webster.