“Find m’ wife,” he commanded the Swiss youth, only to be met with a look of blankness.  He was considering if it might do him good to make a row about this—­he had always been afraid to make rows—­but the other door of the drawing-room opened.  His wife was found.

“’S all for ’s aft’noon,” he exploded to the servitor, who seemed not displeased to withdraw from this authoritative presence.  Then he engaged a slice of bacon with a ruthless fork.

“Where you been?” he demanded of the flapper.  Only way to do—­go at them hammer and tongs!

The flapper gazed at him from the doorway.  She was still pale and there were reddened circles about her eyes.  The little old rag of a morning robe she wore added to her pallor and gave her an unaccustomed look of fragility.

“Where you been all the time?” repeated her husband with the arrogance of a confirmed upstart.

The flapper seemed to be on the point of tears, but she came into the room and sat across the table from him.  In spite of the blurring moisture in her eyes he could still read the old look of ownership.  Time had not impaired it.

“I just perfectly wouldn’t let them know I felt bad,” she began.  “I said I was going to sleep and wouldn’t worry one bit if you perfectly never came home all night.  And you never did, because I couldn’t sleep and watched ... but I wouldn’t let them know it for just perfectly old hundred thousand dollars.  And this morning I said I’d had a bully sleep and felt fit and you had a right to go where you wanted to and they could please mind their own affairs, and I laughed so at them when they said they were going for the police—­”

“Police, eh?  Let ’em bring their old police.  They think I’m afraid of police?” He valiantly attacked an egg.

“Of course not, stupid, but they thought you might wander off and get lost, like those people in the newspapers that wake up in Jersey City or some place and can’t remember their own names or how it happened, and they wanted the police to just perfectly find you, and I wanted them to, too.  I was deathly afraid—­”

“I know my own name, all right.  I’m little Tempest and Sunshine; that’s my name.

“—­but I wouldn’t let them know I was afraid.  And I laughed at them and told them they didn’t know you at all and that you’d come home—­come home.”

He found he could strangely not be an upstart another moment in the presence of that flapper.  He was over kneeling beside her, reaching his arms up about her, pressing her cheek down to his.  The flapper held him tightly and wept.

“There, there!” he soothed her, smoothing the golden brown hair that spilled about her shoulders.  “No one ever going to hurt you while I’m around.  You’re the just perfectly dearest, if you come right down to it.  Now, now!  ’S all right.  Everything all right!”

“It’s those perfectly old taggers,” exploded the flapper, suddenly recovering her true form, “just furiously tagging.”