"Such as canned baked beans and celery?" asks Vee, chucklin'. "And yet, if I stood by and read the directions to her--who knows?" "Let's try her on the Piddies," I suggests. Well, we did. And if the potatoes had been cooked a little more and the roast a little less, it wouldn't have been so bad. The olives were all right, even if Bertha did forget to serve 'em until she brought in the ice cream. But then, the Piddies are used to little slips like that, havin' lived so long out in Jersey. "You see," explains Vee to me afterwards, "Bertha was a bit flurried over her first dinner-party. She isn't much used to a gas oven, either. Don't you think we might try another?" "Sure!" says I. "What are friends for, anyway? How about askin' Mr. and Mrs. Robert Ellins?" "Oh, dear!" sighs Vee, lookin' scared. Then she is struck with a bright idea. "I'll tell you: we will rehearse the next one the night before." "Atta girl!" says I. "Swell thought." It was while she and Bertha was strugglin' over the cook-book, and gettin' advice from various sources, from housekeepin' magazines to the janitor's wife, that this Leon Battou party shows up with his sob hist'ry. "Oh, Torchy!" Vee hails me with, as I come home from the office here the other evenin'. "What becomes of people when they're dispossessed--when they're put out on the street with their things, you know?" "Why," says I, "they generally stay out until they can find a place where they can move in. Has anybody been threatenin' to chuck us out for not----" "Silly!" says she. "It's the Battous." "Don't know 'em," says I. "But surely," goes on Vee, "you've seen him. He's that funny little old Frenchman who's always dodging in and out of the elevator with odd-looking parcels under his arm." "Oh, yes!" says I. "The one with the twinklin' eyes and the curly iron-gray hair, who always bows so polite and shoots that bon-shure stuff at you. Him?" It was. It seems the agent had served notice on 'em that mornin'. They'd been havin' a grand pow-wow over it in the lower vestibule, when Vee had come along and got mixed up in the debate. She'd seen Mrs. Battou doin' the weep act on hubby's shoulder while he was tryin' to explain and makin' all sorts of promises. I expect the agent had heard such tales before. Anyway, he was kind of rough with 'em--at which Vee had sailed in and told him just what she thought. "I'm sure you would have done the same, Torchy," says she. "I might," says I, "if he hadn't been too husky. But what now?" "I told them not to worry a bit," says Vee, "and that when you came home you would tell them what to do. You will, won't you, Torchy?" Course, there was only one real sensible answer to that. Who was I, to step in casual and ditch a court order? But say, when the only girl in the universe tackles you with the clingin' clinch, hints that you're a big, brainy hero who can handle any proposition that's batted up to you--well, that's no time to be sensible.