------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chapter Sixteen Horace Chadwick was stirring the next morning before anyone else in the house. He crept down the main stairway in a suit of pink pajamas and a purple bathrobe and made straight for the front door. He opened it and peered out on the porch. The morning papers had not yet arrived. He slipped back in the hallway and sat down on a settee. He had had a sleepless night and he was in a rotten humor. The wife of his bosom hadn’t spoken a word to him since the affair of the breakfast table the day before and he had been so unmercifully “guyed” by every friend he met that he had taken refuge in his library early in the afternoon and had smoked three times as many black cigars as were good for him. Chilvers had been inaccessible since the visit of the deputation and every effort to get in touch with anyone on the Bulletin had been met with the response that “explanations will be made in tomorrow’s paper.” To make matters worse the Rev. Dr. Chaddow had called to offer spiritual consolation to “dear, kind Mrs. Chadwick.” He had heard the cleric intoning his sympathy in the drawing room and had been obliged to stand at an open window to cool off and keep himself from rushing in and laying violent hands on the reverend gentleman. The story was the talk of the town and telephonic reports from other members of the aggrieved group of prominent citizens brought word of the continuance of violent hostilities in nearly a score of households. The memory of these things seethed in Mr. Chadwick’s mind as he sat with his aching head bent forward on his hands and heard the library clock chime six. Presently a dull thud was heard against the door. Mr. Chadwick jumped up and stepped out on the porch again. He picked up the tightly rolled little bundle of newspapers a boy had just thrown in from the sidewalk, and slammed the door shut behind him. He eagerly unrolled the package, picked out the Bulletin and held up the front page under the shade of a tall hall-lamp. Della, the cook, who was coming down the front stairs in direct violation of a household rule at this particular moment, was frozen in her tracks by the incisive explicitness of a blistering exclamation which came up out of the hall below. It was followed by murmurs and mumbles which she couldn’t quite make out, then by a chuckle or two and finally by a hearty laugh that sent her scurrying upstairs again and down the back way, convinced that the gentleman of the house had suddenly gone out of his mind. Mr. Chadwick followed her up with the nimbleness of a school boy, waving the paper in his hand. He knocked loudly at his wife’s door. “Elizabeth,” he shouted, “God’s in his heaven—all’s right with the world.” “What’s that?” came a sleepy voice from behind the locked door. “The blonde peril has passed on out to sea,” he said gayly. “Take a look at this morning’s Bulletin.”