the only known living creatures that get it."

Ensued red war and chaos. Forrest made a football rush of the sort
that obtained in California before the adoption of Rugby; and the
girls broke the line to let him through, turned upon him, flanked him
on either side, and pounded him with cushions.

He turned, with widespread arms, extended fingers, each finger a hook,
and grappled the three. The battle became a whirlwind, a be-spurred
man the center, from which radiated flying draperies of flimsy silk,
disconnected slippers, boudoir caps, and hairpins. There were thuds
from the cushions, grunts from the man, squeals, yelps and giggles
from the girls, and from the totality of the combat inextinguishable
laughter and a ripping and tearing of fragile textures.

Dick Forrest found himself sprawled on the floor, the wind half
knocked out of him by shrewdly delivered cushions, his head buzzing
from the buffeting, and, in one hand, a trailing, torn, and generally
disrupted girdle of pale blue silk and pink roses.

In one doorway, cheeks flaming from the struggle, stood Rita, alert as
a fawn and ready to flee. In the other doorway, likewise flame-
checked, stood Ernestine in the commanding attitude of the Mother of
the Gracchi, the wreckage of her kimono wrapped severely about her and
held severely about her by her own waist-pressing arm. Lute, cornered
behind the piano, attempted to run but was driven back by the menace
of Forrest, who, on hands and knees, stamped loudly with the palms of
his hands on the hardwood floor, rolled his head savagely, and emitted
bull-like roars.