Mrs. Arty Ferrard’s house is a poor relation to most of the residences there.  The black areaway rail is broken, and the basement-door grill is rusty.  But at the windows are red-and-white-figured chintz curtains, with a $2.98 bisque figurine of an unclothed lady between them; the door is of spotless white, with a bell-pull of polished brass.

Mr. Wrenn yanked this bell-pull with an urbane briskness which, he hoped, would conceal his nervousness and delight in dining out.  For he was one of the lonely men in New York.  He had dined out four times in eight years.

The woman of thirty-five or thirty-eight who opened the door to him was very fat, two-thirds as fat as Mrs. Zapp, but she had young eyes.  Her mouth was small, arched, and quivering in a grin.

“This is Mr. Wrenn, isn’t it?” she gurgled, and leaned against the doorpost, merry, apparently indolent.  “I’m Mrs. Ferrard.  Mr. Poppins told me you were coming, and he said you were a terribly nice man, and I was to be sure and welcome you.  Come right in.”

Her indolence turned to energy as she charged down the hall to the large double door on the right and threw it open, revealing to him a scene of splendor and revelry by night.

Several persons [they seemed dozens, in their liveliness] were singing and shouting to piano music, in the midst of a general redness and brightness of furnishings—­red paper and worn red carpet and a high ceiling with circular moldings tinted in pink.  Hand-painted pictures of old mills and ladies brooding over salmon sunsets, and an especially hand-painted Christmas scene with snow of inlaid mother-of-pearl, animated the walls.  On a golden-oak center-table was a large lamp with a mosaic shade, and through its mingled bits of green and red and pearl glass stormed the brilliance of a mantle-light.

The room was crowded with tufted plush and imitation-leather chairs, side-tables and corner brackets, a couch and a “lady’s desk.”  Green and red and yellow vases adorned with figures of youthful lovers crammed the top of the piano at the farther end of the room and the polished black-marble mantel of the fireplace.  The glaring gas raced the hearth-fire for snap and glare and excitement.  The profusion of furniture was like a tumult; the redness and oakness and polishedness of furniture was a dizzying activity; and it was all overwhelmingly magnified by the laughter and singing about the piano.

Tom Poppins lumbered up from a couch of terrifically new and red leather, and Mr. Wrenn was introduced to the five new people in the room with dismaying swiftness.  There seemed to be fifty times five unapproachable and magnificent strangers from whom he wanted to flee.  Of them all he was sure of only two—­a Miss Nelly somebody and what sounded like Horatio Hood Tem (Teddem it was).

He wished that he had caught Miss Nelly’s last name (which, at dinner, proved to be Croubel), for he was instantly taken by her sweetness as she smiled, held out a well-shaped hand, and said, “So pleased meet you, Mr. Wrenn.”