Doctor Shonto found seats one on either side of her.

“This is certainly a refreshing experience, Mrs. Reemy,” were the younger man’s first words since acknowledging his introduction to her.

“I’m glad you think so,” she replied. “I dearly love to make life refreshing for folks. For myself as well. I thought it would be refreshing fun to dress to-night, with only Mary Temple and me ’way out here in the woods. It was just a freakish whim of mine. I get ’em frequently. Don’t I, Mary Temple?”

The firelight showed red through one of Mary Temple’s[13] thin ears as she half turned her head, doubtless to administer a reproof, and executed “eyes front” again when she changed her mind.

[13]

“I had no idea at the time, though, that two distressed gentlemen were to come to my party and admire me and my table decorations.”

She swept a white arm in the direction of a table at one side of the large room, on which were a spotless cloth, china and silver, and an earth-sweet centerpiece of ferns and California holly berries.

“Now I’ll tell you who I am, so that you will be better able to celebrate properly with me—and then for the glands. I’m dying to learn all about glands. Could you rejuvenate me, Doctor Shonto? Now’s your chance for that pretty birthday speech!”

“I think,” said Shonto, with his grave smile, “that you, Mrs. Reemy, are a far more successful rejuvenator right now than I shall ever be. I’ve sloughed off five years since entering your door.”

“Better! That was extremely well done. And now let’s get down to business:

“I am Charmian Reemy, aged twenty-two to-day. I was born in San Francisco, and live there now. When I was seventeen I was married to Walter J. Reemy, a mining man from Alaska. To be absolutely frank, that marriage was the result of a plot by my father and mother to marry me off to a wealthy man. And I was too young and pliable to put up a decent fight.

“I went to Alaska with my husband, where we lived two years. He was killed in a gambling game, and his will left everything to me. I sold out his Alaska mining[14] property and returned to the United States, where I lived with my parents in San Francisco until both were taken away in the recent flu epidemic.

[14]

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