isn't love a strange thing? And you say the populace was astonished?"

"Almost to the point of paralyzation," answered David as he filled a
stray pipe with some of the major's most choice heart-leaf tobacco. "But
we managed to open up the picture show all right. The entire hive of busy
art-bees was there in a queer kind of clothes; but proud of it. They
acted as if we were dirt under their feet. They smiled on the whole
glad-crowd of us with pity and let us rave over the wrong pictures. The
portrait of Mrs. Peyton Kendrick by the great Susie Carrie Snow
is--er--well, a little more of it shows than seems natural about the left
off arm, but it's a Susie Carrie all right. You ought to have gone,
Major, you would take with the art-gang, but we didn't; we were too
afraid of them. After we had been shooed in front of most of the pictures
and told how to see things in them that weren't there at all, Hob Capers
said:

"'Let's all go down to the University Club and get drunk to forget 'em.'
That's why Mrs. Matilda came home so late."

"And I want Hobson to be nice to her too," continued Mrs. Buchanan as if
she had not been interrupted in planning for her guest. "And Tom and
Peyton Kendrick. I'll ask them to come and see her right away."

"Don't! Wait a bit, Mrs. Matilda," exclaimed David. "Hob saw a mysterious
girl in an orchid hat out in the park day before yesterday. He says his
heart creaked with expansion at just the glimpse of a chin he got from
under her veil. Suppose she's the girl. Let him have first innings."

"David," remarked the major, "flag the sun, moon and stars in their
courses and signal time to reverse a day or a year, but don't try to turn