In the living room Henry Kemp leaned over and kissed his wife. Straightening, he took a cigar out of his vest pocket and eyed it lovingly. He pressed its resilient oily black sides with a tender thumb and finger. He lighted it, took a deep pull at it, exhaled with a long-drawn _pf-f-f_, and closed his eyes for a moment, a little sigh of content breathing from him. He glanced, then, at his watch. Only seven-fifty. Good Lord! He strolled over to Great-aunt Charlotte who was seated near the front parlour doorway and the music. Her head was cocked. He patted her black-silk shoulder, genially. "That cigar smells good, Henry." "Good cigar, Aunt Charlotte." He rolled it between his lips. Aunt Charlotte's fingers tapped the arm of her chair. She waggled her head a little in time with the music. "It's nice to have something that smells like a man in the house." "You vamp!" shouted Henry Kemp. He came over to Belle again who was seated in the most gracious chair the room boasted, doing nothing with a really charming effect. "Say, listen Belle, we don't have to stay so very late this evening, do we? I'm all tired out. I worked like a horse to-day downtown." Before Belle could answer Charley called in from the other room, "Oh, mother, I'm going to be called for, you know." Belle raised her voice slightly. "The poet?" "Yes." "In the flivver?" Her father's question. "Yes. Now roar, Dad, you silly old thing. Imagine a girl like me being cursed with a father who thinks poets and flivvers are funny. If you'd ever tried to manage either of them you'd know there's nothing comic about them." "There is too," contended Henry Kemp. "Either one of 'em's funny; and the combination's killing. The modern--uh--what's this horse the poets are supposed to ride?" His wife supplied the classicism, "Pegasus." "Pegasus!" he called in to Charley. "You stick to your importing, Henry," retorted his gay young daughter, "and leave the book larnin' to mother and me." Henry Kemp, suddenly serious, strolled over to his wife again. He lowered his voice. "About nine o'clock, anyway, can't we? Eh, Belle?" "Not before nine-thirty. You know how mama----" Henry sighed, resignedly. He stood a moment, balancing from heel to toe. "Lot's a peach, that's what she is," he confided irrelevantly to his wife. He puffed a moment in silence, his eyes squinting up through the smoke. "And it's a damn shame, that's what. Damn shame."