"Who is that beautiful girl he is dancing with?" said Miss Thorn.

I told her.

"Have you read his books?" she asked, after a pause.

"Some of them."

"So have I."

The Celebrity was not mentioned again that evening.




CHAPTER VI

As an endeavor to unite Mohair and Asquith the cotillon had proved a
dismal failure. They were as the clay and the brass. The next morning
Asquith was split into factions and rent by civil strife, and the porch
of the inn was covered by little knots of women, all trying to talk at
once; their faces told an ominous tale. Not a man was to be seen. The
Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Chicago papers, all of which had previously
contained elaborate illustrated accounts of Mr. Cooke's palatial park and
residence, came out that morning bristling with headlines about the ball,
incidentally holding up the residents of a quiet and retiring little
community in a light that scandalized them beyond measure. And Mr.
Charles Wrexell Allen, treasurer of the widely known Miles Standish
Bicycle Company, was said to have led the cotillon in a manner that left
nothing to be desired.