The party came.

"Good Heavens!" Warble thought, as she looked at the smart, bored crowd,
"have I got to bring these hifalutin creatures down to earth? I don't know
that I can make them laugh, but I'll give them a jolt!"

She did.

Her cherries bobbing, two long-stemmed ones held between her teeth, she
flew around like a hen with its head off.

"You see," she explained, "it's a Mack Sennett party, everybody puts
things down everybody's back. Like this--and here are the things."

From a tray brought by a footman, Warble selected a fuzzy caterpillar and
turning quickly dropped it down inside the soft collar of Trymie
Icanspoon, a poet, who _would_ dress as he pleased.

He went into amusing spasms and everybody took something from the tray.
There were cold raw oysters, bits of ice, thistles, cooked spaghetti and
plain granulated sugar. They had to put them down the backs of the men
only, because the fashionably dressed ladies hadn't any backs to put them
down. You can't put an oyster down two crossed strings of pearls.

It caused great hilarity to see the Reverend Goodman standing on his head,
trying to lose a red-hot silver dollar; and Daisy Snow, whose debutante
frock was available for the purpose, wriggled beneath the tickling
crawling of a large but harmless spider.