It was an utterly irresponsible gathering that leaned over the red tablecloth that night--an oddly assorted group which, from the very first, Joe realized was not at all to Wickersham's liking. Dexter Allison himself, fairly radiating good-will, sat at the foot of the table, with his son-in-law-to-be on one side and Barbara's little maid, Cecile, on the other. And between Cecile and Barbara, who sat opposite Garry and Miriam, Fat Joe leaned both elbows upon the table edge and monopolized the conversation. The seating arrangement was Joe's; it was his party. And the absolute inattention to detail, the large indifference to veracity which his discourse disclosed before that noisy supper was over, grew to be an astonishing thing. His nights of fancy left Steve aghast in more than one instance; they even forced a stiff smile to Wickersham's lips, and that is saying much for Joe's success as an entertainer, for in the bearing of those two men toward each other there had been evident from the first a chill antipathy which amounted, actually, to armed truce. And the color in Miriam's cheeks, whenever his gaze strayed to that side of the table, helped Steve to forget, temporarily, much that he found not pleasant to recall at all. For Miriam's tongue was no less irresponsible than was Joe's. Her mood was so mercurial that she drew, time and again, the eyes of all at the table. She chattered with an abandon that scandalized Barbara; broke in and interrupted every argument with hoydenish trivialities, in one breath, to appeal to Garry the next for refutation. And Garry, the light-tongued and quick-witted, sat almost dumb of lip before her happy garrulity. But his eyes never left her; they spoke his thought aloud. The quick lift and droop of her eyelids, the brilliancy of her lips, made Miriam's face a living thing of happiness--made Barbara's silence seem even more profound. For the latter's withdrawal from the hilarity, dominated half the time by her father's booming bass, was nearly as complete as was that of Wickersham himself. Just once, shortly before they withdrew for the night, Steve caught a gleam of mischief in the dark eyes she turned toward him. She rose the next moment and started slowly around the room, poking demurely into corners and closetted nooks. Every eye was following her when she finally found the thing for which she was searching. She drew a red felt, yellow-mottoed cushion from beneath the deer-hide covering a chair, and held it up so that all might read. "What Is Home Without a Father?" it ran, and when the joy that stormed through the room made it sure that the exhibition needed no interpreter, Fat Joe turned and hid his face. Miriam rose languidly and joined the other girl in an examination of his handiwork. Smooth face tinted by the firelight, copper hair almost dishevelled in its disarray, she was an exquisitely lovely thing. In her alto voice she expressed her opinion.