sister were as little concerned for their future as the metal hill of Butte itself. “Well, what do you know about that?” they cried simultaneously, as Ida ushered them into the parlour. “Say, it’s grand!” continued Miss Ruby with fervour. “Downright artistic. Ide, you’re a wonder!” Miss Pearl, attuned to a subtler manipulation of colour, felt too happy in this intimate reunion and the prospect of “home-cooking,” to permit even her spirit to grin. “Me for red, kiddo,” she said. “It’s the colour a hard workin’ man or woman wants at the end of the day--warm, and comfortin’, and sensuous-like, and contrastin’ fine with dirty streets and them hills. Glory be, but this chair’s comfortable! I suppose it’s Greg’s.” “Of course. Luckily a woman don’t have the least trouble findin’ out a man’s weak points, and Greg has a few, thank the goodness godness. But come on to the dining-room. I’ve got fried chicken and creamed potatoes and raised biscuit.” The guests shrieked with an abandon that proclaimed them the helpless victims of the Butte restaurant or the kitchenette. The fried chicken in its rich gravy, and the other delicacies, including fruit salad, disappeared so rapidly that there was little chance for the play of intellect until the two girls fled laughing to the parlour. “It’s all very well for Pearl,” cried Miss Ruby, disposing her plump figure in Gregory’s arm-chair, and taking the pins from a mass of red hair that had brought her many a customer; “for she’s the kind that’ll never have to diet if she gets rich quick. I ought to be shassaying round with my hands on my hips right now, but I won’t.” Miss Pearl extended herself on the divan, and Ida rocked herself with a complacent smile. One of her vanities was slaked, and she experienced a sense of immense relief in the society of these two old friends of her own sort. “Say!” exclaimed Miss Miller, “if we was real swell, now, we’d be smokin’ cigarettes.” “What!” cried Ida, scandalised. “No lady’d do such a thing. Say, I forgot the gum.” She opened a drawer and flirted an oblong section of chewing-gum at each of her guests, voluptuously inserting a morsel in the back of her own mouth. “Where on earth have you seen ladies smokin’ cigarettes?”