And when our friends drop in for an evening we talk decorations and furnishings--it is a subject which never wears out. Mostly the women callers favor discussions of tapestries and brocades with intervals spent in fits of mutual wonder over the terrible taste shown by some other woman--not present--in buying the stuff for her house; and the men are likely to be interested in carvings or paintings; but my strong suit is wormholing in all its branches--that and patina. I am very strong on the latter subject, also. In fact among friends I am now getting to be known as the Patina Kid. CHAPTER VIII, THE ADVENTURE OF LADY MAUDE I have dealt at length with our adventures at Fifth Avenue auction houses when we were amassing the furnishings for our Italian rooms and our Italian hallway. But I forgot to make mention of the many friends we encountered at the salesrooms--people who always before had seemed to us entirely normal, but now were plainly to be recognized for devotees of the same passion for bidding-in which had lain its insidious clutches upon us. I recall one victim in particular, a young woman whom I shall call Maude because that happens to be her name. Theretofore this Maude lady had impressed mo as being one of the sanest, most competent females of my entire acquaintance--good-looking, witty and with a fine sense of proportion. Yet behold, here she was, balanced on the edge of a folding chair in an overheated, overcrowded room, her eyes feverish with a fanatical light, a printed catalogue clutched in her left hand and her right ready to go up in signal to the hypnotic gentleman on the auctioneer's block. At a glance we knew the symptoms because in them we saw duplicated our own. We knew exactly what ailed her: She was bidding on various articles, not because she particularly wanted them, but because she feared unless she bought them some stranger might. After the sale had ended and her excitement--and ours--had abated we exchanged confidences touching on our besetting mania.