_Mrs. Fountain_, dropping the robe and seizing the card: "_Mrs._ Arthur J. Gibby! Well, upon my word, this _is_ impudence. It's not only impudence, it's indelicacy. And I had always thought she was the very embodiment of refinement, and I've gone about saying so. Now I shall have to take it back. The idea of a lady sending a bath-robe to a gentleman! What next, I wonder! What right has Mrs. Gibby to send you a bath-robe? Don't prevaricate! Remember that the truth is the only thing that can save you. Matters must have gone pretty far, when a woman could send you anything so--intimate. What are you staring at with that paper? You needn't hope to divert my mind by--" _Fountain_, giving her the paper in which the robe came: "Seems to be for _Mrs._ Clarence Fountain." _Mrs. Fountain_, snatching it from him: "What! It is, it is! Oh, poor dear Lilly! How can you ever forgive me? She saw me looking at it to-day at Shumaker's, and it must have come into her head in despair what else to get me. But it was a perfect inspiration--for it was just what I was longing for. Why"--laughing hysterically while she holds up the robe, and turns it this way and that--"I might have seen at a glance that it wasn't a man's, with this lace on and this silk hood, and"--she hurries into it, and pulls it forward, looking down at either side--"it's just the right length, and if it was made for me it couldn't fit me better. What a joke I _shall_ have with Lilly, when I tell her about it. I sha'n't spare myself a bit!" _Fountain_: "Then I hope you'll spare me. I have some little delicacy of feeling, and I don't like the notion of a lady's giving me a bath-robe. It's--intimate. I don't know where you picked up your girl friends." _Mrs. Fountain_, capering about joyfully: "Oh, how funny you are, darling! But go on. I don't mind it, now. And you may be glad you've got off so easily. Only now if there are any more bath-robes--" A timid rap is heard at the door. "Come in, Maggie!" The door is slowly set ajar, then flung suddenly wide open, and Jim and Susy in their night-gowns rush dancing and exulting in. IX JIM, SUSY, THE FOUNTAINS _Susy_: "We've caught you, we've caught you." _Jim_: "I just bet it was you, and now I've won, haven't I, mother?" _Susy_: "And I've won, too, haven't I, father?" Arrested at sight of her father in the hooded bath-gown: "He does look like Santa Claus, doesn't he, Jimmy? But the real Santa Claus would be all over snow, and a long, white beard. You can't fool _us_!" _Jim_: "You can't fool _us_! We know you, we know you! And mother dressed up, too! There isn't any Mrs. Santa Claus, and that proves it!" _Mrs. Fountain_, severely: "Dreadful little things! Who said you might come here? Go straight back to bed, this minute, or-- _Will_ you send them back, Clarence, and not stand staring so? What are you thinking of?"