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ROBERTS. “Who?”

MRS. ROBERTS. “Why, Mrs. Miller.”

ROBERTS. “Mrs. Miller going to have beer?”

MRS. ROBERTS. “Oh, Edward, I don’t see how you can be so–But there! I won’t blame you, dearest. I know you’re just literally expiring for want of sleep, and it seems to me I must be the cruellest thing in the world to make you go. And if you’ll say the word, I’ll smash off a note now at the eleventh hour–though it’s two hours of eleven yet!–and just tell Mrs. Miller that you’ve got home down sick, and I’ve had to stay and take care of you. Will you?”

ROBERTS. “Oh no, Agnes. It wouldn’t be the truth.”

MRS. ROBERTS, in a rapture of admiration and affection: “Oh, who cares for the truth in such a cause, you poor heroic angel, you? Well, if you insist upon going, I suppose we must; and now the only way is for you to keep everything clearly in mind. You’d better say it over backward, now, and begin with evening dress, because that’s the most important. Now! Evening dress; Mrs. Miller awfully angry; last half, anyway; mustn’t go to sleep; Willis at ten; me alone with the children; both girls out. Now, do you think–Ow–e–e–e!” A ring at the door extorts a shriek from Mrs. Roberts, who simultaneously gathers her robes about her, in order to fall with decency in the event of burglars or fire, while her husband rises and goes to open the apartment door. “Who can it be, at this hour? Oh! Amy!”

MRS. WILLIS CAMPBELL , in the doorway: “Oh, Amy, indeed! How d’ y’ do, Edward! Glad to see you back alive, and just in time for Agnes to kill you with Mrs. Miller’s musicale. May I ask, Agnes, how long you expected me to freeze to death down in that coupe before you came?”

MRS. ROBERTS. “Oh, Amy, dear, you must forgive me! I was just staying to give Edward his charges–you know he’s so terribly forgetful–and I forgot all about you!”

MRS. CAMPBELL. “Then I wish, the next time, he’d give you some charges, my dear. But come, now, do! We shall be rather late, anyway, and that simpleton will be perfectly furious.”

MRS. ROBERTS. “Yes, that’s just what I was saying to Edward. She’ll never forgive you. If it was anybody else, I shouldn’t think of dragging him out to-night.”

MRS. CAMPBELL. “The worst of a bore like her is that she’s sure to come to all your things, and you can’t get off from one of hers. Willis declares he’s going to strike, and I couldn’t have got him out to-night if I hadn’t told him you were going to make Edward go.”

MRS. ROBERTS. “Oh, isn’t it perfectly wicked, Amy! I know he’s just going to have the grippe. See how drowsy he is! That’s one of the first symptoms.”

MRS. CAMPBELL. “It’s one of the symptoms of having passed the night on a sleeping-car, too.”

MRS. ROBERTS. “That’s true, and thank you, Amy. I forgot all about that. But now, Edward, dear, you will remember, won’t you? If I could only stay with you—-“

ROBERTS, who has been drowsily drooping in his chair during the exchange of these ideas between the ladies: “Oh, I’m all right, Agnes. Or–ow, ugh, ow!–I should be if I had a cup of tea.”

MRS. ROBERTS. “There! I knew it. If I had been worth anything at all as a wife I should have had you a cup of tea long ago. Oh, how heartless! And I’ve let both the girls go, and the fire’s all out in the range, anyway. But I’ll go and start it with my own hands–“