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"Hot!" shouted the players exultantly,

"You bet it's hot!"

"Must be," said the more definite of the two rather indefinite girls,

"Darn it!" said the engaging youth to himself "It's none of her business, anyway, what I do!"

"I haven't seen him," responded one of her daughters presently. "Funny, too! Last year he didn't miss a day."

"Well, he never should have married as he did, it's all in a mess," a woman's voice said lazily.

"Rachael's extraordinary of course -- there's no one quite like her. But she wasn't the woman for him. Clarence wanted the little, clinging, adoring kind, who would put cracked ice on his forehead, and wish those bad saloonkeepers would stop drugging her dear big boy. Rachael looks right through him; she doesn't fight, she doesn't care enough to fight. She's just supremely bored by his weakness and stupidity. He isn't big enough for her, either in goodness or badness. I never knew what she married him for, and I don't believe anyone else ever did!"

"Selfish ass!" said a man's voice

"I KNOW Clarence takes Carol and her friends off on week-end trips," some woman said, "and leaves Rachael at home. If Rachael wants the car, she has to ask them their plans. If she accepts a dinner invitation, why, Clarence may drop out the last moment because Carol's going to dine alone at home and wants her Daddy."

"Y'know, that's what I've been wondering," an Englishman added interestedly.

"Why doesn't she take a leaf from Paula's book," somebody suggested, "and marry again? She could go out West and get a divorce on any grounds she might choose to name."

"Yes -- well, Clarence will never stand for THAT," somebody said.

"Where's the mother all this time?" asked the Englishman. "I mean to say, she's living, isn't she, and all that?"

"wonderful"

"Clancy," as some of his intimate friends called him

"Yes, Mrs. Breckenridge, Mr. Breckenridge came home half an hour ago. Alfred is with him."

"Does Alfred have to stay up here doing a chambermaid's work?" demanded the man

"My God! Can you or can't you manage -- between your teas and card parties -- to get someone else to put this room in order?"

"I'm co-o-old!" said the man in the bed

"I've caught my death, I think. Joe made a punch -- some sort of an eggnog -- eggs were bad, I think. I'm poisoned. The stuff was rotten!"

"Well, we've had a night of it, eh?" he said kindly.

"Funny how much one takes the little beggars for grawnted until it's one's own that kicks up the row? You've not seen her -- she's a nice little beggar. You might get some sleep, I should think. I'm going to hang around until some sort of a family jamboree is over, at one o'clock -- your mother insists that we have dinner -- and then I'll go out to the rawnch. But I'll be in in the morning!"

"Ah, well, one carn't help that!" he answered

"That charming little girl with the dark braids, going to England,"

"Doctor Gregory! Doctor Gregory! At the telephone!" chanted a club attendant, passing through the tea-room.

"Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Moulton of England have rented for the season the house of Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Breckenridge, at Belvedere Bay," stated the social columns authoritatively.

"Mr. Breckenridge and Miss Carol Breckenridge will leave at once for the summer camp of Mrs. Booth Villalonga, at Elks Leap, where Mrs. Breckenridge will join them after spending a few weeks with friends."

"Mrs. Prescott,"

"Mr. Butler to speak to you on the telephone, Doctor Gregory."

"Dead, poor fellow!"

"Your stop Quaker Bridge?" asked the conductor, coming in, and beginning to shift the seats briskly on their iron pivots, as one who expected a large crowd to accompany him on the run back.

"Don't know as we can get over the Bar," the man said cheerily.

And a moment later she began to gather her possessions together, and the conductor remarked amiably: "Here we are! But she surely is raining," he added. "Well, we've only got to run back as far as the car barn -- that's Seawall -- to-night. My folks live there."

"Doctor -- " One of the nurses, her hand on his pulse, said softly.