“Oh, Bill--” Warble began to cry. “I want to go back to the restaurant--” “No, no--now, Cream Puff, I didn't mean to lambaste you. But they're a smart crowd--” Warble let two tears rest, glistening, in her lower eyelashes, rolled up her eyes, pulled down the corners of her hibiscus flower mouth, and waited to be kissed. She was. * * * * * Up in Bill's bedroom. Gray silken walls, smoked pearl furniture, a built-in English bed, with gray draperies. Through a cloth of silver portiére, a bathroom done in gray rough stone. Oxidized silver plumbing exposure. No pictures on the walls, save one--a barbaric Russian panel by Larrovitch. At the windows, layers of gauze, chiffon, silk--all gray. A great circular divan was somewhere about, and as he sank down upon it and drew her with him into its engulfing down, he patched up the quarrel. “They took to you,” he said, “you went like hot cakes!” It was an unfortunate allusion, and Warble, smiling with an engaging smile, wheedled, “Pleathe, pleathe--” “No,” Petticoat said, inexorably, “if you eat all the time you'll get to look like that soprano. Howja like that?” “Do you care if I'm fat, Bill?” “Me? Why, I wouldn't care if you were as big as a house. You're my--well, you're my soulmate.” “Oh, I'm so had and glappy! It's sweet to be yours. You must excuse my appetite--you're the only husband I have. My own Pill Betticoat!” He kissed her in his eccentric fashion, and with her plump arms about his neck, she forgot all about Ptomaine Street. CHAPTER VI Warble's own maid was named Beer. A French thing--so slim she seemed nothing but a spine, but supplied with slender, talkative arms and a pair of delicate silk legs that displayed more or less of themselves as the daily hint from Paris reported skirts going up or down as the case might be. A scant black costume and a touch of white apron completed the picture, and Warble played with her as a child with a new doll. Beer wanted to patronize Warble, tried to do so, but found it impossible. Her patronage rolled off of Mrs. Bill Petticoat like hard sauce off a hot apple dumpling. “Do you get enough to eat, Beer?” her mistress asked her. “Wee, maddum,” the maid replied, in her pretty War French. “I eat but a small.” “Well, don't drop to pieces, that's all,” warned Warble. As to personal care and adornment the hitherto neglected education of Warble Petticoat was in Beer's hands. And she handed it out with unstinted lavishness. That was the way things came to Warble; in slathers--in big fat chunks. In avalanches and rushing torrents. Beer engineered all her new wardrobe, and received sealed proposals for its construction. Beer taught her the mysteries of the toilette table, and once initiated into this entrancing art, Warble let herself go in the matter of cosmetics and make-ups, and could scarce wait for Beer's afternoon out, to dabble about by herself.