Her companions looked about them at the crowd of grinning bellboys collecting, together with the scattering of guests who were pretending not to watch while keeping tabs on every round. “I should think Harry’d get sick of this; he’s done it in almost every hotel in New York,” he said restfully, and waited. The pace slackened; soon the two wedged themselves out of the pinwheel, and waited until, crimson-faced, the third party in the proceedings flew out and bore down upon them. “Awfully sorry, sir,” said Harry earnestly. “I got packed in with this lady by mistake, and we were so confused we started whirling around—you can see how that would be—and then I lost my head and lost count——” The intent to kill was by no means abated in the eye of the flaming one. With a hasty, “By George, Mary, we must catch the train; we’ve lost a lot of time with this gentleman here!” Harry seized Jerry and drifted through the revolving doors once more. No one went after them. Joy and Steve found them by a taxi outside, Harry leaning up against it in a Napoleonic attitude. “Was that neat, or was it not?” he hailed them triumphantly. Steve helped the girls into the taxi, pushed Harry inside, and said to the man: “Drive to the Astor roof.” “Where’s that?” the driver asked, turning a helpless expression upon him. “Why,—you drive to the Hotel Astor, and then just keep on driving up to the roof.” Steve spoke sweetly, considerately, as one might to a child, then climbed in and banged the door. “Just for that, he’ll go the long way around,” Harry complained, peering out at the meter as they started off. “You have such cheap ideas, Harry!” said Dave. “Jerry knows us, of course; but I was going to make Miss Nelson think we were millionaires.” “Never mind—we’ll make the waiters at the Astor think we’re millionaires. Not in the obvious way! But by the good old method of gas. What do you say—are you game, Jerry?” “The waiters don’t listen the way they used to,” Jerry objected. “Oh, you haven’t been around with us for some time! Look here; I—-I’ll be the Western magnate; I’ve got a whacking black cigar I’ve been keeping just for this. Jerry, you look as though you could have come from most anywhere; you’ll be my wife, and I probably picked you up in some mining camp while I was getting rich, or something. See? Act with that as a background. We’re the recent rich, that want anything that’s high-priced or has a fancy name. Get it?” “And I,” Steve contributed, “will be a New York crest-rider—gay young rounder—look down on you of course, but keen to wangle the contract out of you through this social means.” “Contract! Oh, yes, there’s got to be a contract!”