Jack and Thomason were wielding their paddles with great vigor. Jack had also begun to lurch from right to left, as a man might do in a storm-tossed raft. Thomason, catching the drift of things, was imitating him. And then, unfortunately, Thomason’s bed gave way. With an ear-splitting crash it collapsed, just as Bonnie May screamed: “Look! Look!” And of course it was at that precise instant that Mrs. Baron came rushing into the room. CHAPTER XXVIII AFTER THE CURTAIN WAS LOWERED Mrs. Baron had returned from her calling expedition earlier than she had expected to. She had had a feeling that something might go wrong. Prescience is really a wonderful thing. Now as the poor lady stood within Thomason’s room she was quite terrified. For the moment there had been a dreadful din. And now, looking at Thomason, she caught the rebellious expression in his round, innocent eyes. She saw that he had brass rings in his ears. Unfortunately she did not associate the brass rings with the window blinds. And his face was horribly streaked. His right leg was sticking up in air quite inelegantly, and he was clawing at some other unspeakable person in an effort to regain his equilibrium. And then there was Bonnie May, with an insane light in her eyes. And behind Bonnie May was a smirking creature who grinned maliciously at Mrs. Baron, as if he and she shared some guilty secret in common. Certainly she did not know the man. Moreover, there stood Flora, looking unspeakably demure, with the man Addis by her side. Addis was looking as if her arrival had provoked him. His look seemed to say: “If you don’t like it, why don’t you run along?” Mrs. Baron did not stop to take in any of the others. At first she was speechless, as the saying is, though she was trying to shape certain comments which she meant to direct at Bonnie May. She opened her mouth once and again quite helplessly. Then she found her voice. “You little--limb of Satan!” The words came with difficulty. In that instant her features looked quite unlovely. Bonnie May might have told her that elderly people ought never, under any circumstances, to become violently angry. But Bonnie May was in no condition to utter elemental truths. “You awful little--wretch!” added Mrs. Baron. “No sooner do I turn my back than you disgrace me! You open my door to--the whole street!” Bonnie May was blinking rapidly. She was very pale. If you dreamed that you were finding large sums of money, and some one threw a bucket of cold water on you, and you woke up to find yourself in the poorhouse--that perhaps fairly describes her mental state. She had not been quite sorry that the bed collapsed. Some of the secondary cells in her brain had been warning her, as she stood on the “bridge,” that the third act could scarcely be made to come to a true climax. She couldn’t be projected into the sea really. She would have to step tamely down from the table and begin to talk in a commonplace fashion.