for a few weeks, I'm coming back to look about and find some nice cosy little business which will let me put money into it and keep me in luxury. Are there any complaints?”      

       “Even a couple of thousand on Benny Whistler...” said the mild young man.     

       “I don't want your Benny Whistler,” said Sally. “I wouldn't have him if you gave him to me. If I want to lose money, I'll go to Monte Carlo and do it properly.”      

       “Monte Carlo,” said the gloomy man, brightening up at the magic name. “I was in Monte Carlo in the year '97, and if I'd had another fifty dollars... just fifty... I'd have...”      

       At the far end of the table there was a stir, a cough, and the grating of a chair on the floor; and slowly, with that easy grace which actors of the old school learned in the days when acting was acting, Mr. Maxwell Faucitt, the boarding-house's oldest inhabitant, rose to his feet.     

       “Ladies,” said Mr. Faucitt, bowing courteously, “and...” ceasing to bow and casting from beneath his white and venerable eyebrows a quelling glance at certain male members of the boarding-house's younger set who were showing a disposition towards restiveness, “... gentlemen. I feel that I cannot allow this occasion to pass without saying a few words.”      

       His audience did not seem surprised. It was possible that life, always prolific of incident in a great city like New York, might some day produce an occasion which Mr. Faucitt would feel that he could allow to pass without saying a few words; but nothing of the sort had happened as yet, and they had given up hope. Right from the start of the meal they had felt that it would be optimism run mad to expect the old gentleman to abstain from speech on the night of Sally Nicholas' farewell dinner party; and partly because they had braced themselves to it, but principally because Miss Nicholas' hospitality had left them with a genial feeling of repletion, they settled themselves to listen with something resembling equanimity. A movement on the part of the Marvellous Murphys—new arrivals, who had been playing the Bushwick with their equilibristic act during the preceding week—to form a party of the extreme left and heckle the speaker, broke down under a cold look from their hostess. Brief though their acquaintance had been, both of these lissom 

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