LITMIR.BIZ

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if Billie Hawker was only home——" began Pennoyer.

      "But he isn't," objected Wrinkles, "and that settles that."

      Grief and Pennoyer thought more. Ultimately Grief said, "Oh, well, let's eat what we've got." The others at once agreed to this suggestion, as if it had been in their minds.

      Later there came a quick step in the passage and a confident little thunder upon the door. Wrinkles arranging the tin pail on the gas stove, Pennoyer engaged in slicing the bread, and Great Grief affixing the rubber tube to the gas stove, yelled, "Come in!"

      The door opened, and Miss Florinda O'Connor, the model, dashed into the room like a gale of obstreperous autumn leaves.

      "Why, hello, Splutter!" they cried.

      "Oh, boys, I've come to dine with you."

      It was like a squall striking a fleet of yachts.

      Grief spoke first. "Yes, you have?" he said incredulously.

      "Why, certainly I have. What's the matter?"

      They grinned. "Well, old lady," responded Grief, "you've hit us at the wrong time. We are, in fact, all out of everything. No dinner, to mention, and, what's more, we haven't got a sou."

      "What? Again?" cried Florinda.

      "Yes, again. You'd better dine home to-night."

      "But I'll—I'll stake you," said the girl eagerly. "Oh, you poor old idiots! It's a shame! Say, I'll stake you."

      "Certainly not," said Pennoyer sternly.

      "What are you talking about, Splutter?" demanded Wrinkles in an angry voice.

      "No, that won't go down," said Grief, in a resolute yet wistful tone.

      Florinda divested herself of her hat, jacket, and gloves, and put them where she pleased. "Got coffee, haven't you? Well, I'm not going to stir a step. You're a fine lot of birds!" she added bitterly, "You've all pulled me out of a whole lot of scrape—oh, any number of times—and now you're broke, you go acting like a set of dudes."

      Great Grief had fixed the coffee to boil on the gas stove, but he had to watch it closely, for the rubber tube was short, and a chair was balanced on a trunk, and two bundles of kindling was balanced on the chair, and the gas stove was balanced on the kindling. Coffee-making was here accounted a feat.

      Pennoyer dropped a piece of bread to the floor. "There! I'll have to go shy one."

      Wrinkles sat playing serenades on his guitar and staring with a frown at the table, as if he was applying some strange method of clearing it of its litter.

      Florinda assaulted Great Grief. "Here, that's not the way to make coffee!"

      "What ain't?"

      "Why, the way you're making it. You want to take——" She explained some way to him which he couldn't understand.

      "For heaven's sake, Wrinkles, tackle that table! Don't sit there like a music box," said Pennoyer, grappling the eggs and starting for the gas stove.

      Later, as they sat around the board, Wrinkles said with satisfaction, "Well, the coffee's good, anyhow."

      "'Tis good," said Florinda, "but it isn't made right. I'll show you how, Penny. You first——"

      "Oh, dry up, Splutter," said Grief. "Here, take an egg."

      "I don't like eggs," said Florinda.

      "Take an egg," said the three hosts menacingly.

      "I tell you I don't like eggs."

      "Take—an—egg!" they said again.

      "Oh, well," said Florinda, "I'll take one, then; but you needn't act like such a set of dudes—and, oh, maybe you didn't have much lunch. I had such a daisy lunch! Up at Pontiac's studio. He's got a lovely studio."

      The three looked to be oppressed. Grief said sullenly, "I saw some of his things over in Stencil's gallery, and they're rotten."

      "Yes—rotten," said Pennoyer.

      "Rotten," said Grief.

      "Oh, well," retorted Florinda, "if a man has a swell studio and dresses—oh, sort of like a Willie, you know, you fellows sit here like owls in a cave and say rotten—rotten—rotten. You're away off. Pontiac's landscapes——"

      "Landscapes be blowed! Put any of his work alongside of Billie Hawker's and see how it looks."

      "Oh, well, Billie Hawker's," said Florinda. "Oh, well."

      At the mention of Hawker's name they had all turned to scan her face.

      CHAPTER XX.

       Table of Contents

      "He wrote that he was coming home this week," said Pennoyer.

      "Did he?" asked Florinda indifferently.

      "Yes. Aren't you glad?"

      They were still watching her face.

      "Yes, of course I'm glad. Why shouldn't I be glad?" cried the girl with defiance.

      They grinned.

      "Oh, certainly. Billie Hawker is a good fellow, Splutter. You have a particular right to be glad."

      "You people make me tired," Florinda retorted. "Billie Hawker doesn't give a rap about me, and he never tried to make out that he did."

      "No," said Grief. "But that isn't saying that you don't care a rap about Billie Hawker. Ah, Florinda!"

      It seemed that the girl's throat suffered a slight contraction. "Well, and what if I do?" she demanded finally.

      "Have a cigarette?" answered Grief.

      Florinda took a cigarette, lit it, and, perching herself on a divan, which was secretly a coal box, she smoked fiercely.

      "What if I do?" she again demanded. "It's better than liking one of you dubs, anyhow."

      "Oh, Splutter, you poor little outspoken kid!" said Wrinkle in a sad voice.

      Grief searched among the pipes until he found the best one. "Yes, Splutter, don't you know that when you are so frank you defy every law of your sex, and wild eyes will take your trail?"

      "Oh, you talk through your hat," replied Florinda. "Billie don't care whether I like him or whether I don't. And if he should hear me now, he wouldn't be glad or give a hang, either way. I know that." The girl paused and looked at the row of plaster casts. "Still, you needn't be throwing it at me all the time."

      "We didn't," said Wrinkles indignantly. "You threw it at yourself."

      "Well," continued Florinda, "it's better than liking one of you dubs, anyhow. He makes money and——"

      "There," said Grief, "now you've hit it! Bedad, you've reached a point in eulogy where if you move again you will have to go backward."

      "Of course I don't care anything about a fellow's having money——"

      "No, indeed you don't, Splutter," said Pennoyer.

      "But then, you know what I mean. A fellow isn't a man and doesn't stand up straight unless he has some money. And Billie Hawker makes enough so that you feel that nobody could walk over him, don't you know? And there isn't anything jay about him, either. He's a thoroughbred, don't you know?"

      After reflection, Pennoyer said, "It's pretty hard on the rest of us, Splutter."

      "Well, of course I like him, but—but——"

      "What?" said Pennoyer.

      "I don't know," said Florinda.

      Purple Sanderson lived in this room, but he usually dined out. At a certain time in his life, before he came to be a great artist,

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