“‘You said something there,’ says Eddie, glancing back at ’em.  Ben Sutton was trying to cheer Alonzo up by reminding him of the Christmas night they went to sleep in the steam room of the Turkish bath at Nome, and the man forgot ’em and shut off the steam and they froze to the benches and had to be chiselled off.  And Eddie trotted off with his load.  You’d ought to seen the way the hack sagged down on Ben’s side.  And I felt that I had done a good work, so I hurried home to get a bite to eat and dress and make the party, which I still felt would be a good party even if the husband of our hostess was among the killed or missing.

“I reached the clubhouse at eight o’clock of that beautiful June evening, to find the party already well assembled on the piazza and the front steps or strolling about the lawn, about eight or ten of our prominent society matrons and near as many husbands.  And mebbe those dames hadn’t lingered before their mirrors for final touches!  Mrs. Martingale had on all her rings and the jade bracelet and the art-craft necklace with amethysts, and Mrs. Judge Ballard had done her hair a new way, and Beryl Mae Macomber, there with her aunt, not only had a new scarf with silver stars over her frail young shoulders and a band of cherry coloured velvet across her forehead, but she was wearing the first ankle watch ever seen in Red Gap.  I couldn’t begin to tell you the fussy improvements them ladies had made in themselves—­and all, mind you, for the passing child of Nature who had never paid a bill for ’em in his life.

“Oh, it was a gay, careless throng with the mad light of pleasure in its eyes, and all of ’em milling round Wilfred Lennox, who was eating it up.  Some bantered him roguishly and some spoke in chest tones of what was the real inner meaning of life after all.  Henrietta Templeton Price hovered near with the glad light of capture in her eyes.  Silent but proud Henrietta was, careless but superior, reminding me of the hunter that has his picture taken over in Africa with one negligent foot on the head of a two-horned rhinoceros he’s just killed.

“But again the husbands was kind of lurking in the background, bunched up together.  They seemed abashed by this strange frenzy of their womenfolks.  How’d they know, the poor dubs, that a poet wasn’t something a business man had ought to be polite and grovelling to?  They affected an easy manner, but it was poor work.  Even Judge Ballard, who seems nine feet tall in his Prince Albert, and usually looks quite dignified and hostile with his long dark face and his moustache and goatee—­even the good old judge was rattled after a brief and unhappy effort to hold a bit of converse with the guest of honour.  Him and Jeff Tuttle went to the grillroom twice in ten minutes.  The judge always takes his with a dash of pepper sauce in it, but now it only seemed to make him more gloomy.