Mr. Gilfeather shook his head. "I'll send 'em up." Everett opened the door and they heard his steps going up the stairs. "Hell!" said Mr. Gilfeather. Joe smiled sympathetically, but said nothing. It was getting towards noon and customers began to straggle in singly or by twos and threes. Certain of these customers were warned by Mr. Gilfeather's thumb, pointing directly upward, and vanished. The others had chosen their favorite tables and had been waited upon by two white-aproned and silent youths, who had appeared mysteriously from nowhere. The room gradually filled and gradually emptied again, but there was no sign of Everett and his friends. Mr. Gilfeather went to his dinner and came back a little after two o'clock. The high-toned and classy place showed few customers present. It was a slack time. Two men, at a table behind a mammoth paper fern, were drinking whiskey and water and talking earnestly; another, hidden by a friendly palm, was consuming, in a leisurely manner, a hot Tom and Jerry; another, tilting his chair back in the far corner, read the early afternoon paper and sipped his ale; and one of our white-aproned friends vanished through the door beside the bar with a tray containing five different mixtures of the most modern varieties, of which I do not know the names. Mr. Gilfeather looked about on his despised decorations and sighed; and the outer door opened again and admitted Miss Sally Ladue. Mr. Gilfeather half turned, in response to a smothered exclamation from Joe, turned again, and cast a startled glance up at the smiling lady over the bar. "Switch 'em off, Joe, quick!" and Joe switched 'em off, leaving the lady with her leopard skin in murky darkness, which, under the circumstances, was the best place for her. But he had not been quick enough. Sally's color was rather high as she stood just inside the door. Nothing but palms and ferns--very lifelike--met her eyes; nothing, that is, except a very chaste bar of San Domingo mahogany and the persons of Joe and Mr. Gilfeather. The lady in the leopard skin no longer met her eyes, for that lady had been plunged in gloom, as we are aware. Sally, too, was aware of it. Mr. Gilfeather had a guilty consciousness of it as he advanced. "Good afternoon, Miss Ladue," he said, somewhat apprehensively. "I hope nothing is going wrong with my daughter?" "No, Mr. Gilfeather," replied Sally, hastening to reassure him. "She is doing very well, and I expect that she will graduate well up in her class." Mr. Gilfeather was evidently relieved to hear it.