“Don’t call me ‘Thax!’” he admonished, icily. “It isn’t good form to shower familiar nick-names on your hotelkeeper. It gives him a notion he can be familiar or else that _you’re_ trying to be familiar. It’s bad, either way. Call me ‘Mine Host.’ And in moments of reproof, call me ‘Fellow.’ If only I can acquire a bald head and a red nose and a bay window (and a white apron to drape over it) I’ll be able to play the sorry rôle with no more discomfort than if I were having my backteeth pulled. In the meantime, I’m as sore as a mashed thumb. What on earth possessed her to do such a thing?” “Why, she looks on it as a stroke of genius!” said Doris. “Any one can go visiting. But no one ever went boarding in this way, before. It’s just like Auntie. She’s ever so wonderful. She isn’t a bit like any one else. Aren’t you going to be at all glad to have us here?” CHAPTER III AN INVOLUNTARY LANDLORD Thaxton Vail was eating a solitary breakfast, next morning, when, wholly unannounced, a long and ecstatic youth burst in upon him. The intruder was Willis Chase, who had roomed with Thaxton at Williams and who still was his fairly close and most annoyingly irresponsible friend. “Grand!” yelled Chase, bearing down upon the breakfaster. “Grand and colossal! A taxi-bandit is dumping all my luggage on the veranda, and your poor sour-visaged butler is making awful sounds at him. I didn’t bring my man. I didn’t even bring my own car. I taxied over from the club, just as I was; the moment I read it. I knew you had plenty of cars here; and the hotel valet can look after me. I’m inured to roughing it. Isn’t it a spree?” “If you’ll stop running around the ceiling, and light somewhere, and speak the language of the country,” suggested the puzzled Thaxton, “perhaps I can make some guess what this is all about. I take it you’re inviting yourself here for a visit. But what you mean by ‘the hotel valet’ is more than I--” “Don’t you grasp it?” demanded Chase, in amaze. “Haven’t you even read that thing? It was in one of the New York papers, at the club, this morning. A chap, there, said it was in the _Advocate_, yesterday. Your secret has exploded. All the cruel world knows of your shame. You run a hotel. You have to; or else you’d lose Vailholme. It’s all in the paper. In nice clear print. For everybody to read. And everybody’s reading it, ever so happily. I’m going to be your first guest. It all flashed on me, like--” “Then switch the flash off!” ordered Thaxton, impatiently. “This crazy thing seems to hit you as a grand joke. To me, it hasn’t a single redeeming feature. Clear out!”