“You must help me, Lucy.”  I spoke hurriedly and in an undertone.  “Some of these people think they’re at a funeral.  Mix them up and introduce them again if they don’t talk to each other.  Take Mr. Banister over to Gracie Hurd.  He’s afraid to cross the room to get to her and she hasn’t budged since she came in.  And get Mr. Schrioski from Mrs. Gibbons.  She’s telling him about the baby’s whooping-cough and enjoying the telling; but he isn’t.  Go to him first.”

As I spoke to Lucy, David Guard came in the room.  He wore his usual clothes, but his cravat was fixed with apparent firmness and no longer crawled half-way up his collar, and his hair had been carefully brushed.  As we shook hands I laughed.

“I’m frightened.  Did you ever do a thing in a hurry and then wonder what you did it for?  Most of these people have such a stupid time at home, so seldom go out at night, that I thought I’d have a party for them, but they seem to think they’re at a show waiting for the curtain to go up.  What am I going to do?”

“Give them time.  They can’t unlimber all at once.  Mrs. Crimm over there thinks it would be improper for her to smile, as she’s just lost her brother, but Mr. Crimm is a performance in himself.  What’s he in uniform for?”

“He goes on duty at twelve, and he doesn’t want to lose time going home to change.  Look at Archer Barbee.  I believe he’s in love with Loulie Hill.”

“He is.  I hope they are going to be married soon.  Why don’t you let these people dance?”

I had not thought of dancing.  My guests were oddly assorted, of varying ages and conditions, and I had gathered them in for an evening away from their usual routine rather than with the view of getting a congenial group together, and the realization of social blundering was upon me.  Dancing might do what I could not.

To dance in my sitting-room would be difficult.  The few things in the room adjoining it could be easily pushed against the wall, however, and quickly Fannie Harris and Mr. Guard began to make it ready.  And while they made ready, Mr. Crimm was invited to sing.

Mr. Crimm is my good friend.  I had never known a policeman before I came to Scarborough Square, but I shall always be glad I know him.  He is a remarkable man.  He has been Mrs. Crimm’s husband for thirty years and has his first drink to take.

As I played the opening notes of “Molly, My Darling, There’s No One Like You,” Mr. Crimm took his place by the piano.  Straight and important, shoulders back, and a fat right hand laid over a fat left one, both of which rested just above the belt around his well-developed waist, he surveyed the silent company with blinking, twinkling eyes.  Mrs. Crimm, struggling between righteous pride in the possession of so handsome a piece of property as her blue-uniformed and brass-buttoned husband, and the necessity of subduing all emotions save that of respect, due to the recent death of her brother, sat upright in her chair, hands clasped in her lap, and eyes fastened on the floor.  Not until the song was over did she lift them.