"If you please, Walter," she said, meekly.

"How long you goin' to hang around fixin' up in that
dressin'-room?"

"I'll be out before you're ready yourself," she promised him; and
kept her word, she was so eager for her good time to begin. When
he came for her, they went down the hall to a corridor opening
upon three great rooms which had been thrown open together, with
the furniture removed and the broad floors waxed. At one end of
the corridor musicians sat in a green grove, and Walter, with
some interest, turned toward these; but his sister, pressing his
arm, impelled him in the opposite direction.

"What's the matter now?" he asked. "That's Jazz Louie and his
half-breed bunch--three white and four mulatto. Let's----?"

"No, no," she whispered. "We must speak to Mildred and Mr. and
Mrs. Palmer."

"'Speak' to 'em? I haven't got a thing to say to THOSE berries!"

"Walter, won't you PLEASE behave?"

He seemed to consent, for the moment, at least, and suffered her
to take him down the corridor toward a floral bower where the
hostess stood with her father and mother. Other couples and
groups were moving in the same direction, carrying with them a
hubbub of laughter and fragmentary chatterings; and Alice,
smiling all the time, greeted people on every side of her