Gertie looked speculatively at Carl twice during this offering. He knew that the gods were plotting an abominable thing. She was going to call upon him for the "stunt" which had been inescapably identified with him, the song, "I went up in a balloon so big." He met the crisis heroically. He said loudly, as the shaky strains of the Swiss ballad died on the midnight mountain air of 157th Street (while the older men concealed yawns and applauded, and the family in the adjoining flat rapped on the radiator): "I'm sorry my throat 's so sore to-night. Otherwise I'd sing a song I learned from a fellow in California--balloon s' big." Gertie stared at him doubtfully, but passed to a kitten-faced girl from Minnesota, who was quite ready to give an imitation of a child whose doll has been broken. Her "stunt" was greeted with, "Oh, how cun-ning! Please do it again!" She prepared to do it again. Carl made hasty motions of departure, pathetically holding his throat. He did not begin to get restless till he had reached Ninety-sixth Street and had given up his seat in the subway to a woman who resembled Tottykins. He wondered if he had not been at the Old Home long enough. At Seventy-second Street, on an inspiration that came as the train was entering the station, he changed to a local and went down to Fifty-ninth Street. He found an all-night garage, hired a racing-car, and at dawn he was driving furiously through Long Island, a hundred miles from New York, on a roadway perilously slippery with falling snow. CHAPTER XXVII Carl wished that Adelaide Benner had never come from Joralemon to study domestic science. He felt that he was a sullen brute, but he could not master his helpless irritation as he walked with Adelaide and Gertie Cowles through Central Park, on a snowy Sunday afternoon of December. Adelaide assumed that one remained in the state of mind called Joralemon all one's life; that, however famous he might be, the son of Oscar Ericson was not sufficiently refined for Miss Cowles of the Big House on the Hill, though he might improve under Cowles influences. He was still a person who had run away from Plato! But that assumption was far less irritating than one into which Adelaide threw all of her faded yearning--that Gertie and he were in love. Adelaide kept repeating, with coy slyness: "Isn't it too bad you two have me in the way!" and: "Don't mind poor me. Auntie will turn her back any time you want her to." And Gertie merely blushed, murmuring, "Don't be a silly." At Eightieth Street Adelaide announced: "Now I must leave you children. I'm going over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I do love to see art pictures. I've always wanted to. Now be as good as you can, you two." Gertie was mechanical about replying. "Oh, don't run away, Addy dear." "Oh yes, you two will miss an old maid like me terribly!" And Adelaide was off, a small, sturdy, undistinguished figure, with an unyielding loyalty to Gertie and to the idea of marriage.