"I intend to," said Lathrop, "I was born single and I like it." "Oh, how I envy you! You see, Mrs. Wellington--she's a queen among women, mind you--a queen among women, but she has the 'stravagance of a----" Lathrop had endured all he could endure, even from a privileged character like little Jimmy Wellington. He rose to take refuge in the smoking-room. But the very vigor of this departure only served to help Wellington to his feet, for he seized Lathrop's coat and hung on, through the door, down the little corridor, always explaining: "Mrs. Wellington is a queen among women, mind you, but I can't stand her temper any longer." He had hardly squeezed into the smoking-room when the porter and an usher almost invisible under the baggage they carried brought in a new passenger. Her first question was: "Oh, porter, did a box of flowers, or candy, or anything, come for me?" "What name would they be in, miss?" "Mrs. Wellington--Mrs. James Wellington." CHAPTER V A QUEEN AMONG WOMEN Miss Anne Gattle, seated in Mrs. Jimmie Wellington's seat, had not heard Mr. Jimmie Wellington's sketch of his wife. But she needed hardly more than a glance to satisfy herself that she and Mrs. Jimmie were as hopelessly antipathetic as only two polite women can be. Mrs. Jimmie was accounted something of a snob in Chicago society, but perhaps the missionary was a trifle the snobbisher of the two when they met. Miss Gattle could overlook a hundred vices in a Zulu queen more easily than a few in a fellow countrywoman. She did not like Mrs. Jimmie, and she was proud of it. When the porter said, "I'm afraid you got this lady's seat," Miss Gattle shot one glance at the intruder and rose stiffly. "Then I suppose I'll have to----" "Oh, please don't go, there's plenty of room," Mrs. Wellington insisted, pressing her to remain. This nettled Miss Gattle still more, but she sank back, while the porter piled up expensive traveling-bags and hat boxes till there was hardly a place to sit. But even at that Mrs. Jimmie felt called on to apologize: "I haven't brought much luggage. How I'll ever live four days with this, I can't imagine. It will be such a relief to get my trunks at Reno." "Reno?" echoed Miss Gattle. "Do you live there?" "Well, theoretically, yes." "I don't understand you." "I've got to live there to get it." "To get it? Oh!" A look of sudden and dreadful realization came over the missionary. Mrs. Wellington interpreted it with a smile of gay defiance: "Do you believe in divorces?" Anne Gattle stuck to her guns. "I must say I don't. I think a law ought to be passed stopping them." "So do I," Mrs. Wellington amiably agreed, "and I hope they'll pass just such a law--after I get mine." Then she ventured a little shaft of her own. "You don't believe in divorces. I judge you've never been married." "Not once!" The spinster drew herself up, but Mrs. Wellington disarmed her with an unexpected bouquet: