“You say you don’t know them at all, yet you’re passing up a wonderful chance for us to go along to some awful little joint while Félicie isn’t here to clamp down on dirty food!” “We might as well get a meal paid for,” said Joy, watching Jerry’s preparations with ill-concealed suspense. Jerry, always sensitive to waves of feeling, dropped the bright green dinner gown she had taken up and laughed. “Why did you make ’em throw me in with the invitation, Joy, if you’re going to feel cross-eyed about my get-up?” “Haven’t you brought anything—darker?” Joy asked feebly. “Not in the dinner line. Never mind. Here’s a black velvet of Félicie’s.” “It will hang on you in folds.” “Oh, no, it won’t.” Jerry had wriggled in and out of the velvet, pinned a few bunches in the luscious material, then sat down with her sewing-kit in her favourite cross-legged position. Inside of six minutes, she put away her thimble, stuck her needle on the outside of the kit and threw it on the bed, and put on the velvet, which fell about her in full, majestic lines, but looked as if it had been built for her. Joy thought with a spurt of hope that she had never seen Jerry look so well. The black toned her down; the velvet softened her. She felt ashamed of her momentary qualms, and tried to make up for it by talking effusively on the way over, and jesting about the way cars were being sent for them. However, her efforts only evoked a puzzled look from Jerry, who did not know Joy in a talkative vein. The car drew up in front of a large red sandstone house just off Fifth Avenue in the fifties, which brought a whistle from Jerry. “Say, Joy—what are you getting us into? The nearest I’ve been to this sort of stuff is the movies!” It did not add to their composure to have a butler admit them, to be elevatored to one floor to take off their wraps and elevatored to another floor to meet Mabel. They were ushered into a drawing-room, which seemed to Joy’s eyes full of people whose faces were obscured in the candlelight which was the only illumination affected. Mabel came forward to greet them, a little overplump without the coat and glossing-over sables, but very attractive in warm rose, her only jewelry a single pink pearl hanging at the end of a platinum and diamond chain. Joy noticed these details automatically, her attention focussed on Jerry, who, since she had entered the room, had taken on a manner entirely foreign to her make-up as Joy knew it. She was the easy, gracious grande dame from the lilt of her walk and assured poise to the cultured cadences of the voice that Joy had often likened to rough plush. She had slipped into it as readily as one slips into another garment.