"Aw--tee-hee!" she said, wiping at her upper lip. "Here!" She regarded the foam sing down into amber quiet. "I'm on the water-wagon," she said, essaying to be light of vein, crossing her hands and feet and tilting her glance at him. "Say, here's a girl won't blow the foam off a fellow's glass for fear she'll get soapsuds in her eyes!" "Wash her face with 'em!" MISS KINEALY: Aw, now, Stella; can't you be a good fellow for once? Do it, if it hurts you. Honest, I hate to say it, but you're the limit, you are! My God! limber up a little--limber up! "Here, now--open your mouth and shut your eyes." "Open it for her, Ed." "Aw, no; don't force her if she don't want it." "Gowann, Stella; be human, if it hurts you." Redly and somewhat painfully, the observed of all observers, Miss Schump tilted her head and drank, manfully and shudderingly, to the bitter end of the glass. "Attaboy! Say, tell it to the poodles and the great Danes! That Jane's no amachure!" Eyes stung to tears, pink tip of her tongue quickly circling her lips, Miss Schump held out to Mr. Kinealy the empty tumbler. "Now, there!" "More?" "I'm game." "Don't give 'er a whole glass, Ed." She drank, again at one whiff. "That's more like it! Didn't kill you, did it? Now eat that Swiss-cheese sandwich and come over next to me and Arch while he tells fortunes." Miss Schump rose, rather high of head, the moment hers. Miss Kinealy stretched her hand out into the center of the closing-in circle of heads. "I said palm-reading, Arch, not hand-holding. Leave that part to Ed and Gert over there. Now quit squeezing--" Mr. Sensenbrenner bent low, almost nose to her palm. "I see," he began, his voice widening to a drawl--"I se-e a fellow about my size and complexion entering your life--" To Miss Schump, her hand on Miss Kinealy's shoulder and her head peering over, the voice seemed to trail off somewhere out into infinitudes of space, off into bogs of eternity, away and behind some beyond. "Gee! it's hot in here!" she muttered, no one heeding or hearing. "Sure hot. Whew!" "Going on a long journey, and a fellow about my size and complexion is going along with you, and there's money coming--" "Sure hot!" It was then Miss Schump, with fear of a rather growing and sickening sense of dizziness and of the wavy and unstable outline of things, slipped quietly and unobtrusively out into the hallway, her craving for air not to be gainsaid. The door to the little bedroom stood open, her pink scarf uppermost on the cot-edge. She stood for an instant in the doorway, regarding and wanting it, but quite as suddenly turned, and down the three flights gained the dewy quiet of out-of-doors, fighting muzziness.