"Oh, no, indeed," protested the May Girl. Very definitely she snapped the silken threads, removed the clumsy bauble from her finger, and handed it back to Rollins. "But--but it's a beautiful ring!" she hastened chivalrously to assure him. "I'll--I'll keep the orchids!" she assented with real dimples. On Rollins's sweating face the symptoms of acute collapse showed suddenly. With a glare that would have annihilated a less robust soul than George Keets's he turned and laid bare his horrid secret to an unfeeling Public. "I'd rather you kept the _ring_," sweated Rollins. "The--The orchids have got to go back!--I only hired the orchids!--That is I--I bribed the gardener. They've got to be back by nine o'clock to-night. For some sort of a--a party." "To-night?" I gasped. "In all this storm f Why, what if the May Girl had refused to--to----?" In Rollins's small, blinking eyes, Romance and Thrift battled together in terrible combat. "I gotta go back," mumbled Rollins. "He's got my watch!" "Oh, for goodness sake you mustn't risk losing your watch!" laughed the May Girl. George Keets didn't laugh. He hooted! I had never heard him hoot before, and ribald as the sound seemed emanating from his distinctly austere lips, the mechanical construction of that hoot was in some way strangely becoming to him. The May Girl quite frankly though was afraid he had hurt Rollins's feelings. Returning swiftly from her bedroom with the lovely exotics bunched cautiously in one hand she turned an extravagantly tender smile on Rollins's unhappy face. "Just--Just one of them," she apologized, "is crushed a little. I know you told me to be awfully careful of them. I'm very sorry. But truly," she smiled, "it's been perfectly Wonderful--just to have them for a day! Thank you!--Thank you a whole lot, I mean! And for the day itself--it's--it's been very--pleasant," she lied gallantly. Snatching the orchids almost roughly from her hand Rollins gave another glare at George Keets and started for his own room. With his fingers on the door-handle he turned and glared back with particular ferocity at the May Girl herself. "Pleasant?" he scoffed. "_Pleasant_?" And crossing the threshold he slammed the door hard behind him. Never have I seen anything more boorish! "Why--Why, how tired he must be," exclaimed the May Girl. "Tired?" hooted George Keets. He was still hooting when he joined the Bride and Bridegroom in the library.