Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sharon Skidmore and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: "IT'S ALL RIGHT, DEAREST; THIS IS YOUR SURPRISE" [See page 28] JUST AROUND THE CORNER ROMANCE _en casserole_ BY FANNIE HURST ILLUSTRATED HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON MCMXIV COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY HARPER & BROTHERS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 1914 CONTENTS PAGE POWER AND HORSE-POWER 1 OTHER PEOPLE'S SHOES 31 THE OTHER CHEEK 72 MARKED DOWN 110 BREAKERS AHEAD 153 THE GOOD PROVIDER 199 SUPERMAN 247 THE PARADISE TRAIL 300 THE SQUALL 329 ILLUSTRATIONS "IT'S ALL RIGHT, DEAREST; THIS IS YOUR SURPRISE" _Frontispiece_ SHE HELD UP A HAND AS LIGHT AS A LEAF, AND HE TOOK IT IN A WIDE, GENTLE CLASP THAT ENVELOPED IT _Facing p._ 290 "HELLO!" HE WHISPERED, EXTENDING BOTH HANDS AND SMILING AT HER UNTIL ALL HIS TEETH SHOWED " 328 "I WENT OVER TO LOO'S, AND WE STAYED UP AND TALKED SO LATE--I DIDN'T KNOW--" " 360 JUST AROUND THE CORNER POWER AND HORSE-POWER In the Knockerbeck Hotel there are various parlors; Pompeian rooms lined in marble and pillared in chaste fluted columns; Louis Quinze corners, gold-leafed and pink-brocaded, principally furnished with a spindly-legged Vernis-Martin cabinet and a large French clock in the form of a celestial sphere surmounted by a gold cupid. There are high-ceilinged rendezvous rooms, with six arm and two straight chairs chased after the manner of Gouthiere, and a series of small inlaid writing-desks, generously equipped for an avidious public to whom the crest-embossed stationery of a four-dollar-a-day-up hotel suggests long-forgotten friends back home. Just off the lobby is the Oriental room, thick with arabesque hangings and incense and distinguished by the famous pair of Chinese famille rose mandarin jars, fifty-three inches high and enameled with Hoho birds and flowers. In careful contrast the adjoining room, a Colonial parlor paneled in black walnut and designed by a notorious architect, is ten degrees lower in temperature and lighted by large rectangular windows, through whose leaded panes a checkered patch of sunshine filters across the floor for half an hour each forenoon. Then there is the manicure parlor, done in white tile, and stationary wash-stands by the Herman Casky Hygienic Company, Eighth Avenue.