While they were speaking, Martine had been making a rapid calculation. The only result at which she arrived was the impossibility of recovering the lost envelope. "There's one thing I can do," she said. "I'll dress as quickly as I can and run over to the branch postoffice; then I'll beg them to look over their mail and see if an envelope is there with the tickets I describe." "Of course you can try, but I feel sure that you will not succeed." "Then what shall I do, mamma? It will be terrible to disappoint three people I've invited to so important an affair as this." "There is only one thing, my dear. If you fail to recover the tickets, you can pay single admissions at the door, and if you remember the number of your seats or in a general way where they are, you can take possession of them." "Thank you, mamma, that certainly is the only way, but dear me, four single admissions at one dollar apiece; this is something I hadn't planned for, and I intended to be so economical the rest of the spring." As quickly as she could, Martine hastened away to the postoffice, only to find that the mail from the box in which she had deposited her letters would not reach the office until half-past two, and that even then it was doubtful if the envelope would be given to her immediately. The only way, then, of saving her reputation as a hostess was to follow her mother's suggestion. She met her friends as she had planned, paid for admission to the hall and after some discussion with a rather obtuse usher at last found herself in possession of her own seats. It is to be feared that her impressions of the great pianist were sadly blurred that afternoon. Her brain was automatically working out problems of expenditure. She was trying to plan in what way she could economize to make up for the extravagance of this Paderewski matinee--to make up not only for this, but for various other needless expenses that she had lately incurred. So abstracted was she that she failed to join in the applause repeatedly showered on the musician, and on leaving the hall, she had very little to say to her friends. At the hotel afterwards, however, she brightened up and confided to Priscilla and Grace the way in which she had lost the tickets. "I think you managed very well," said Priscilla, "I should not have had the least idea what to do if anything like that happened to me." "Neither should I," added Grace, "but you are always clever about things, Martine." "Oh, no, it was all mamma; I felt quite sure at first that I should have to telephone you not to meet me, but 'all's well that ends well,' and I'm so glad that that stupid usher let us have our seats; for you know they told me at the box office that actually there wasn't a seat to sell in the whole house, and ours were about the last admissions." "You were fortunate enough," said Miss Mings who had listened with considerable amusement to Martine's entertaining account of her mistake adventure.