"The Pallinders must be awfully well off," I said. My companion eyed me soberly. The Chorus was a serious and practical young fellow; at the present time he is conducting a great milling business somewhere up in Michigan. They make two or three kinds of breakfast-foods, I think, and have been extraordinarily successful. But we were not dreaming of that the night we perched together on the make-believe mound behind the swaying drop-curtain; rather must his thoughts have been occupied with Mazie Pallinder, her long serpentine figure, and sprightly drawl. For I noticed how his eyes wandered constantly in the direction whence she might appear. "I wish the boys would get here," he said, wrinkling his brows. "It's half-after already. They're beginning to crowd in pretty thick--last time I looked all the first fifteen rows were taken. Is--ah--is Miss Pallinder going to come and help her mother receive? I didn't see her. But if she is, I--ah--I really ought to go and speak to them." He coloured furiously at the mere mention of her name; and it struck me as exquisitely humorous that his goddess was probably at that instant producing just such a blush on her own well-tried cheeks by what mysterious agency! Pink nail-paste and talcum-powder had a good deal to do with it, I believe. "She isn't there, and you shouldn't go in costume anyhow. Nobody ought to be seen beforehand--Mazie says so. She's all dressed and sitting in her room until 'Mrs. Tankerville,' begins. How did it happen you didn't go to dinner at Doctor Vardaman's with the others?" "Why, I had to go down to the train to meet Susie; she's coming on from New Haven with the two children to make us a visit. Her train was due at eight, but it's five hours late--stalled at a washout just this side of Pittsburgh, the fellow at the ticket-office told me. He said all the Pan-Handle and B. & O. trains were coming in anywhere from one to nine hours behind the schedule-time. Freshets, you know; the Ohio's on a boom. They're having an awful time in Cincinnati, they say, biggest flood in years. There, isn't that J. B.'s voice?"