"Fine idea!" declared Mitchell. "Fine! Now that you’ve had it," he chuckled, "we’ll start home. I’m leaving at eight." "You are not!" proclaimed Mrs. Mitchell flatly. "You will stay right here for at least three days and do nothing but devote yourself to your child. And to her mother!" she subjoined, as if that were an afterthought; all with a toss of her chin, which, by way of emphasis, held its advanced position for a moment after the speech was done. "And the business of the company?" Mitchell suggested, with a solicitous air. "It can wait on me," averred Mrs. Mitchell decisively, taking a turn up and down the room and surveying once more the signs of confusion and of hasty packing. "Many’s the time I’ve waited on it. You can stay, too, John," she said, turning to Hampstead. "I want you to take Bessie to a lot of places Robert and I have been and won’t care to visit this time." "Robert!" and while her eyes turned toward the windows, two of which opened on a view of Market Street, the new commander began a redisposition of forces, "I rather like this suite. Bessie and I will take the corner room. You can take this room and Mr. Hampstead can move across the hall, or anywhere else they can put him." As an act of possession, Mrs. Mitchell walked to the dresser, took off her hat, stabbed the two pins into it emphatically, and tossed it upon the bed, where it bloomed like a flower-garden in the midst of a desert of papers while she, still standing before the mirror, bestowed a few comfortable pats upon her hair. "John," Mitchell said jovially, "I know orders from headquarters when I get ’em. You were going to stay over, anyway; but use your own judgment about obeying the instructions you have just received." "Never had such agreeable instructions in my life," declared Hampstead, turning to Mrs. Mitchell with an elaborately stagy bow, and the natural quotation from Hamlet which leaped to his lips: "’_I shall in all my best obey you, madam._’" "See that you do," said that lady, not half liking the bow and shooting a glance at Hampstead less cordial than austere. "And by the way," she added, "see that you don’t let that stage nonsense carry you much further, young man," with which remark Mrs. Mitchell turned abruptly and gave Hampstead a most complete view of a broad and uncompromising back. In Mrs. Mitchell’s mind a man had much better be a section hand on the Great Southwestern than a fixed star on the drama’s milky way. "By the way, mother," remarked Mr. Mitchell, with the air of one who makes an important revelation, "John is just going out to dine with William N. Scofield." Mrs. Mitchell turned quickly, and her dark eyes shot a meaningful glance at her husband, while the line of her lower lip first grew full and then protruded. A squeeze of that lip at the moment, Hampstead reflected, would extract something at least as sour as very sour lemon juice. "Scofield is after him," bragged Mitchell.