And Mead, flippant, hard, and misanthropic in the state of nature, softened wonderfully as he sat in the gloom of the tablecover, in silent possession of those two slim fingers.

His words grew gentle, his manner kind, and her answers were calculated to petrify her long-suffering family if they could have overheard them.

“Mr. Mead,” she said at last, “will you be so very kind as to stay here quietly under the table while I scramble out and go up to my room?”

No tongue of angel could have made a more welcome suggestion.  Mead uttered feeble and polite proffers of escort, and silently called down blessings upon the head he had never seen.  He had just allowed himself to be dissuaded from knight errantry, when the door opened and Jimmie flashed his dark lantern about the brightly lighted room.  He then beckoned mysteriously to the still vigilant Horace, who lurked in the hall.

“Have you found them?” whispered that youth.

“Not a trace of them,” answered Jimmie triumphantly.  “They ain’t gone out.  They ain’t in their rooms, and I’m studyin’ how I can round ’em up.  They’re the most suspicious characters I ever see, Horace, and this night’s work may cost us our lives.”

This disposition of his existence did not seem to cheer Horace.

“Counterfeiters,” Jimmie went on, “is the desperatest kind of criminals there is.  Still we got to git ’em.  I’ll look round this room just so as nothing won’t escape us, and then we’ll go up to the next floor.  It’s good we got two of them located in the bridal suite.”

Jimmie, with his prying dark lantern and his prodding nightstick, soon reached the space under the table, and the counterfeiters secreted there.

“I got ’em,” he cried delightedly.  “Hi, you.  Come out of there and show yourselves.”

They came.  There was nothing else to do.

“Moses’s holy aunt,” cried Jimmie, falling back upon Horace, who promptly fell back upon the sofa.

“Here, you,” said Mead.  “You get out of this, both of you.  Don’t you know this is a private sitting-room?”

“No settin’-room,” said Jimmie, recovering somewhat, “is private to them as sets under tables blackening one another’s eyes.”

“You ridiculous idiot,” snorted Mead.  “Do you dare to think that I hurt this lady?”

“Lady?  Ain’t she your wife?”

“She is not,” snapped Kate.

“Then why did you hit her?” demanded Jimmie.  “If she ain’t your wife what did you want to hit her for?  An’ anyway, she’d ought to be.  That’s all I got to say.”

* * * * *

The same idea occurred to Mr. and Mrs. Hawley, crouched guiltily against their door to hear their victims pass, for their amazed ears caught these words—­the first were Kate’s: 

“You must let me give you some of my lotion.”

And then came Mead’s: 

“I shall be most grateful.  It must be hot stuff.  You know you’re hardly disfigured at all.”