"Oh! Will you tell me, please, whether Mr. Cecil Van Dyke left with them?"
"——"
"Oh, I'm so sorry! What's the matter?"
"——"
"Appendicitis!" The receiver dropped and swung against the wall. Dolores had fled to mamma.
Perkins and Mason, treating each other at every station short of the prohibition town of Pomona, would have felt less complacent over their little joke had they seen the procession that left the Hotel Westminster at one-thirty P. M. on that balmy Christmas day. The order of march, as instituted by the American Dolores, was as follows:
1. The Payson carriage, with Mrs. and Miss Payson on the forward seat and a tenderly wrapped Freshman on the other, and the coachman instructed to drive gently.
2. Dr. Mead and the devoted bell-boy in a phaëton.
3. Small citizens on foot.