But if you don't mind payin' four prices, and can stand the comp'ny at the adjoinin' tables, just being part of the picture and seeing it from the inside is almost worth the admission. If there's any livelier purple spots on the map than these gasolene road houses from eight-thirty P. M. to two-thirty in the mornin', I'll let you name 'em. Cornelia rather shies at the sight of the fat bottle peekin' out of the cracked ice; but she gets over that feelin' after Miss Stover has expressed her sentiments. "Champagne!" says the schoolma'am. "Oh, how perfectly delightful! Do you know, I always have wanted to know how it tasted." Say, she knows all about it now. Not that she put away any more'n a lady should,--at the Clover Blossom,--but she had tackled a dry Martini first, and then she kept on tastin' and tastin' her glass of fizz, and the waiter keeps fillin' it up, and that twinkle in her eye develops more and more, and her conversation gets livelier and livelier. So does Cornelia's. They gets off some real bright things, too. You'd never guess there was so much fun in Cornie, or that she could look so much like a stunner. She was just leanin' over to whisper something to me about the peroxide puffed girl at the next table, and I was tryin' to stand bein' tickled in the neck by that long feather of hers while I listens, and Miss Stover was snuggled up real chummy on the other side, when I looks up the aisle and sees a little group watchin' us with their mouths open and their eyebrows up. Leadin' the way is Pinckney. Oh, he'd done his part, all right, just as I'd told him over the wire; for right behind him is Durgin, starin' at Cornelia until he was pop eyed. But that wa'n't all. Trust Pinckney to add something. Beyond Durgin is Mrs. Purdy-Pell--and Sadie. Now, I've seen Mrs. McCabe when she's been some jarred; but I don't know as I ever watched the effect of such a jolt as this. You see, Cornelia's back was to her, and all Sadie can see is that wistaria lid with the feather danglin' down my neck. Sadie don't indulge in any preliminaries. She marches right along, with her chin in the air, and glues them Irish blue eyes of hers on me in a way I can feel yet. "Well, I must say!" says she. "Eh?" says I, tryin' hard to put on a pleased grin. "So Pinckney brought you along too, did he? Lovely evenin', ain't it?" "Why, Sadie?" says Cornelia, jumpin' up and givin' 'em a full face view. And you should have seen how that knocks the wind out of Sadie. "Wha-a-at!" says she. "You?" "Of course," says Cornie. "And we're just having the grandest lark, and----Oh! Why, Durgin! Where in the world did you come from? How jolly!" "Ain't it?" says I. "You see, Sadie, I'm carryin' out instructions."