He dressed about six, intending to dine somewhere alone that New Year’s Eve.  The somewhere, as usual, ended at the Syrinx Club—­or rather at the snowy portal—­for there he collided with Samuel Strathclyde Ogilvy and Henry Knickerbocker Annan, and was seized and compelled to perform with them on the snowy sidewalk, a kind of round dance resembling a pow-wow, which utterly scandalised the perfectly respectable club porter, and immensely interested the chauffeurs of a row of taxicabs in waiting.

“Come!  Let up!  This isn’t the most dignified performance I ever assisted at,” he protested.

“Who said it was dignified?” demanded Ogilvy.  “We’re not hunting for dignity.  Harry and I came here in a hurry to find an undignified substitute for John Burleson.  You’re the man!”

“Certainly,” said Annan, “you’re the sort of cheerful ass we need in our business.  Come on!  Some of these taxis belong to us—­”

“Where do you want me to go, you crazy—­”

“Now be nice, Louis,” he said, soothingly; “play pretty and don’t kick and scream.  Burleson was going with us to see the old year out at the Cafe Gigolette, but he’s got laryngitis or some similar species of pip—­”

“I don’t want to go—­”

“You’ve got to, dear friend.  We’ve engaged a table for six—­”

“Six!”

“Sure, dearie.  In the college of experience coeducation is a necessary evil.  Step lively, son!”

“Who is going?”

[Illustration:  “‘Me lord, the taxi waits.’”]

“One dream, one vision, one hallucination—­” he wafted three kisses from his gloved finger tips in the general direction of Broadway—­“and you, and Samuel, and I. Me lord, the taxi waits!”

“Now, Harry, I’m not feeling particularly cheerful—­”

“But you will, dear friend; you will soon be feeling the Fifty-seven Varieties of cheerfulness.  All kinds of society will be at the Gigolette—­good, bad, fashionable, semi-fashionable—­all imbued with the intellectual and commendable curiosity to see somebody ’start something.’  And,” he added, modestly, “Sam and I are going to see what can be accomplished—­”

“No; I won’t go—­”

But they fell upon him and fairly slid him into a taxi, beckoning two other similar vehicles to follow in procession.

“Now, dearie,” simpered Sam, “don’t you feel better?”

Neville laughed and smoothed out the nap of his top hat.

They made three stops at three imposing looking apartment hotels between Sixth Avenue and Broadway—­The Daisy, The Gwendolyn, The Sans Souci—­where negro porters and hallboys were gorgeously conspicuous and the clerk at the desk seemed to be unusually popular with the guests.  And after every stop there ensued a shifting of passengers in the taxicabs, until Neville found himself occupying the rear taxi in the procession accompanied by a lively young lady in pink silk and swansdown—­a piquant face and pretty figure, white and smooth and inclined to a plumpness so far successfully contended with by her corset maker.