"Oh, for heaven's sake try some other music!" cried the Partridge Hunter venomously, and Alrik clutched out wildly for the first thing he could reach. It was "Give My Regards to Broadway." We had practically worn out the record the year before, but its mutilated remains whirred along, dropping an occasional note or word, with the same cheerful spunk and unconcern that characterized the song itself: "Give my regards to Broadway, Remember me to Herald Square, Tell all the--whirry--whirry, whirrrrry--whirrrrrrr That I will soon be there." The Partridge Hunter began instantly to beat muffled time with his soft felt slippers. Alrik plunged as usual into a fearfully clever and clattery imitation of an ox shying at a street-car. _But what of it? No wakened, sparkling-eyed girl came stealing forth from her corner to cuddle her blazing cheek against the cool, brass-colored jowl of the phonograph horn._ An All-Goneness is an amazing thing. It was strange about Alrik's Wife. Her presence had been as negative as a dead gray dove. But her _absence_ was like scarlet strung with bells! The evening began to drag out like a tortured rubber band getting ready to snap. It was surely eleven o'clock before the Pretty Lady returned from the kitchen with our hot lemonades. The tall glasses jingled together pleasantly on the tray. The height was there, the breadth, the precious, steaming fragrance. _But the Blue Serge Man had always mixed our nightcaps for us._ With grandiloquent pleasantry, the Partridge Hunter jumped to his feet, raised his glass, toasted "Happy Days," choked on the first swallow, bungled his grasp, and dropped the whole glass in shattering, messy fragments to the floor. "Lord," he muttered under his breath, "one could stand missing a fellow in a church or a graveyard or a mournful sunset glow--but to miss him in a foolish, folksy--hot lemonade!--Lord!" And he shook his shoulders almost angrily and threw himself down again on the hearth-rug. The darkening room was warm as an oven now, and the great, soft, glowing pile of apple-wood embers lured one's drowsy eyes like a flame-colored pillow. No one spoke at all until midnight. But the clock had only just finished complaining about the hour when the Partridge Hunter straightened up abruptly and cried out to no one in particular: "Well, I simply can't bluff this out any longer. I've just _got_ to know how it all happened!" No one stopped to question his meaning. No one stopped to parry with word or phrase. Like two tense music-boxes wound to their utmost resonance, but with mechanism only just that instant released, Alrik and the Pretty Lady burst into sound. The Pretty Lady spoke first. Her breath was short and raspy and cross, like the breath of a person who runs for a train--and misses it.