her nerves, and the rest throwing on their wraps in a hurry.
Downstairs Max was telephoning for his car, which wasn't due for
an hour, and Jim was walking up and down, swearing under his
breath. With the prospect of getting rid of them all, and, of
going home comfortably to try to forget the whole wretched
affair, I cheered up quite a lot. I even played up my part of
hostess, and Dallas told me, aside, that I was a brick.

Just then Jim threw open the front door.

There was a man on the top step, with his mouth full of tacks,
and he was nailing something to the door, just below Jim's
Florentine bronze knocker, and standing back with his head on one
side to see if it was straight.

"What are you doing?" Jim demanded fiercely, but the man only
drove another tack. It was Mr. Harbison who stepped outside and
read the card.

It said "Smallpox."

"Smallpox," Mr. Harbison read, as if he couldn't believe it. Then
he turned to us, huddled in the hall.

"It seems it wasn't measles, after all," he said cheerfully. "I
move we get into Mr. Reed's automobile out there, and have a
vaccination party. I suppose even you blase society folk have not
exhausted that kind of diversion."

But the man on the step spat his tacks in his hand and spoke for