"Bellows, is my nose frozen?" demanded that gentleman, in tones faint with dread.

"No, sir. It looks to me to be quite warm, sir."

"Is your mistress engaged, Bellows?" inserted Bosworth, quietly. "If she is, I'll not trouble you to help me off with my coat."

"I—I think she is, sir. I'll see, however."

"Very odd," said Mr. Van Pycke, senior, as the man disappeared down the hall.

"I think there's a dinner going on," said Bosworth, beginning to button up his coat.

"No one would go to a dinner on such a night as this," rasped Mr. Van Pycke, who knew all of the eleventh-hour habits of society. He took up his position over a simmering floor register. "I'm wet to my knees. My feet are like ice. I wish that demmed servant would hurry back here and get me a hot drink of some sort. Ring the bell there, Bosworth. I'm—I'm quite sure I feel something stuffy in my chest. Good God, if it should be pneumonia!" His legs trembled violently.

Bosworth did not ring the bell. He was staring thoughtfully at the floor, and paid no attention to his father's maunderings. The humor of the situation was beginning to sift through his slowly clearing brain.

Bellows returned.

"Mrs. Scoville is at home, and begs the Misters Van Pycke to bear with her for a few minutes. She is at dinner with a few guests. In the drawing-room there are other guests. You will please to make yourselves at home until she leaves the table. The gentlemen are to smoke in the drawing-room to-night."

"A crowd?" muttered Bosworth. Then his eyes lighted up with sudden relief. "Thank the Lord, I won't have to do it."

"Do what?" demanded his father.

Bosworth's wits were keener. "Go out into the storm without something to warm me up," he equivocated.

"Bellows, who is in the drawing-room?" asked Mr. Van Pycke, eying the door with some curiosity. "They're deuced quiet, whoever they are."

Bellows grew very red in the face and resolutely pressed his lips together. He took Mr. Bosworth's overcoat and hat and laid them carefully on the Italian hall seat before venturing to reply.

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