* * * * * She sought Petticoat in his rooms. She tumbled into his lap, and he pushed her out until he could set aside the Angora cat and the Airedale and his pet guinea pig, then he said politely, “Is this your seat?” and she perched on his knee. “Do you love me, dear?” she asked, her voice full of a dumb pathos. “Ooooooooooooooooooo! I'm sleepy,” he said, with a cavernous yawn and a Herculean stretch that threw her out on the floor. “Want any money?” She looked at him. He was not unlike John Barrymore in The Jest, and Warble fell for him afresh. “You are so beautiful--” she wailed. “I wish you loved me--” “I wish I did,” he returned, honestly, “but you are such a butter-ball.” “Oh, Butterfly Thenter calls anybody Butter-ball who weights over ninety-five! If you're so cut up about it I won't live under this roof another minute! I can earn my own living, and all I want, too! You can get a divorce and marry some thread of a woman who has ptomaines all the time!” “Pish, tush, Warb, don't be a damfool! Lay off the melodrama. I do love you--at least, I love ninety-five pounds of you. Now, will you be good?” “Yeth.” “And will you try to think of me as a devoted and loving husband, even if I'm not one?” “Oh, my dear, I am unjust to you! I will take what you give me--what you can spare from the little dog and the cat and the guinea pig. And I will be your own little Petty Warblecoat. And I won't give you over to Iva Payne--I hate her!” CHAPTER X The mail. The Petticoats rarely received mail. It wasn't done much in Butterfly Center. So unaesthetic. On a tray, a lacquered lackey brought a letter to Warble. A white letter. Large and square--ominously square. Warble took tray and all and went with it to Petticoat's rooms--the letter was addressed to him. She tapped but there was no answer. Listening at the door, she could hear him splashing in his rock-hewn bath and leaping, chamois-like, from crag to crag of his quarried bathroom. She sat down on the floor and waited. Petticoat's toilets were like linked sweetness, long drawn out. It was late afternon, before he emerged, fresh, roseate and smiling, and imprinted a kiss on Warble's cheek that left the red stamp of a lip-sticked mouth. Warble sometimes thought if it could be arranged as a dating stamp, she could keep a record of when he had last kissed her. Poor little Warble--she loved her Big Bill so fondly, and he only looked on her as something fatter than his dog, a little bigger than his cat. Timidly she proffered the trayed letter. “Oh, my Heavens!” and Petticoat smote himself, hip and thigh. “Where did you get this? Why was I not told sooner of its arrival? To me! And postmarked Lake Skoodoow-abskoosis! Home of my ancestors! Woman! Why this delay? _Why_?” “It came this morning,” said Warble, apologetically, “but you were in your bath, and the door was locked.” “But this is a most important letter. Why didn't you slip it under the door?”