“I’ve got ’em,” he began, “I know ’em now.  Horace, this is the biggest thing you’ll ever be anywhere near.”  And, as his hearers drew close about him, he whispered “counterfeiters.  The hull kit and bilin’ of ’em.”

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Kate and Patty wrestled afresh with the automobile veil, and had succeeded in getting it tied in a limp string around the bridesmaid’s neck, leaving all her head and face uncovered.  And when the groom and the groomsman returned she, with a muffled gurgle, dived back into the seclusion of the tablecover.

“We’ve got rid of those bounders,” Hawley announced, and—­

“Hello!” cried Mead, “Miss Perry gone already?”

“She was very tired,” said Patty veraciously, but evasively.

“Awfully jolly girl, isn’t she Mead?” said Hawley, with the expansiveness of the newly-wed.  “Handsome, too?”

“Perhaps she is, but so long as she dresses like a veiled prophet it is hard to tell.”

“If you two can get on without me,” said Patty, disregarding a muffled protest from under the table, “I’ll go up and fetch,” she made these comforting words very clear, “my green motor veil.”

Instantly, when he closed the door after her, Mead turned to Hawley.

“There’s something wrong with this confounded mask,” said he.  “This strap-thing that goes round my head must be too tight.  I’ve been mad with it the last half hour.  How do I look?” he asked genially as he took it off, and proceeded to tamper with the buckles and elastic.  “Howling Jupiter!” he cried a moment later, “I’ve busted it.”

As the two friends stood and stared at one another aghast, they heard the click of Patty’s returning heels, and Mead, abandoning dignity, courage—­everything except the broken mask—­dived into Miss Perry’s maiden bower.

Mrs. Hawley watched this procedure with wide and fascinated eyes.  No ripple shook the walls of the bower.  No sound proceeded from it as the moments flew.  Then Patty fell away into helpless laughter and wept tears of shocked and sudden mirth into the now useless motor veil.

“Patty!” remonstrated her husband, but she laughed helplessly on.  “At least come out into the hall and laugh there,” he urged, “the poor chap will hear you.”  And when he had followed her and listened to her shaken whisper, he broke into such a shout as forced the indignant and outraged Kate into a shudder of protest and disgust.

Instantly Mead threw an arm past the table’s single central support and grasped a handful of silk chiffon and two fingers.

He, being of an acquisitive turn, retained the fingers.  She being of a dictatorial turn, rebuked him.

“Finding is keeping,” he shamelessly remarked.  “Even in infancy I was taught that.”

Now, a certain pomp of scene and circumstance is necessary to the sort of dignified snubbing with which Miss Perry was accustomed to treat possible admirers.  Also, a serene consciousness of superlative good looks.  But Kate Perry disfigured, cramped into a ridiculous hiding place, and suffering untold miseries of headache and throbbing eyes, was a very different creature.