I gasps.

“But, I say, Mr. Ellins,” I begins, “how do I—­”

“Don’t ask me how, young man,” he snaps.  “What do I know about tea-parties?  Do as I tell you.”

Say, that’s some unique order to shoot at a private sec., ain’t it?

And did I make good?  Listen.  Before nine o’clock that night I had the thing all plotted out and half a dozen people gettin’ busy.  Course, it’s mostly Vee’s program.  She claps her hands when she hears the tale.

“Why, Torchy!” says she.  “Isn’t that just splendid!  Certainly we can do it.”

And when Vee gets enthusiastic over anything it ain’t any flash in the pan.  It’s apt to be done, and done right.  She tells me what to do right off the reel.  And you should have seen me blowin’ that five hundred like a drunken sailor.  I charters a five-piece orchestra, gives a rush order to a decorator, and engages a swell caterer, warnin’ Tessie by wire what to expect.  Vee tackled the telephone work, and with her aunt’s help dug up about a dozen old families that remembered the Bagstocks.  How they hypnotized so many old dames to take a trip ’way downtown I don’t know; but after Mrs. Tessie McCloud had watched the fourth limousine unload from two to three classy-lookin’ guests, she near swallowed her gum.

“Muh Gawd!” says she.  “Am I seein’ things, or is it true?”

Not only dames, but a sprinklin’ of old sports in spats and frock-coats and with waxed white mustaches was rounded up; and, with five or six debutantes Vee had got hold of, it’s some crusty push.

First off Mrs. Bagstock had been so limp and unsteady on her pins that she’d started in by receivin’ ’em propped up in a big chair.  But by the time the old parlor got half full and the society chatter cuts loose she seems to buck up a lot.

Next thing I knew, she was standin’ as straight as a Fifth Avenue doorman, her wrinkled old chin well up and her eyes shinin’.  Honest, she was just eatin’ it up.  Looked the part, too.  A bit out of date as to costume, maybe; but with her white hair piled up high and the diamond-set combs in it, and a cameo as big as a door-knob at her throat, and with that grand-duchess air of hers, hanged if she don’t carry it off great.  Why, I heard her gossipin’ with old Madam Van Pyle as chummy and easy as if it had been only last week since they’d seen each other, instead of near twenty years ago.

Havin’ to pay off some of the help, I had to stick around until it was all over.  So I was there when she staggers towards Tessie and leans heavy on her shoulder.

“They—­they’ve all gone, haven’t they?” she asks.  “I—­I’m so tired and—­and so happy!  It has been the most successful Wednesday I’ve had for some time, hasn’t it?”

“Has it?” says Tessie.  “Why, Auntie, this was a knockout, one of the kind you read about.  Honest, even when I was fittin’ corsets for the carriage trade, I never got so close to such a spiffy bunch.  But we had the goods to hand ’em—­caviar sandwiches, rum for the tea, fizz in the punch.  Believe me, the Astors ain’t got anything on us now.”