"Please, is Mamie 'n' me 'vited, too?" whispered Elsie to Pyne.
"You two chicks will be curled up among the feathers at eight o'clock," he told her. "Don't you go and worry 'bout any dinner-parties. The sooner you go to sleep, the quicker you'll wake up in the morning, and then we're going out to hunt—for what, do you think?"
"Candies," said Mamie.
"Toys," cried Elsie, going one better.
"We're just going to find two of the loveliest and frilliest and pinkiest-cheeked dolls you ever saw. They'll have blue eyes as big as yours, Elsie, and their lips will be as red and round as yours, Mamie. They'll talk and say—and say all sorts of things when you pinch their little waists. So you two hurry up after you've had your supper, say your prayers and close your eyes, and when you open them you'll be able to yell for me to find that doll-store mighty sharp."
"Say, Charlie," cried his uncle, "I never heard you reel off a screw like that before. Now, if I didn't know you were a confirmed young bachelor, I would begin to have suspicions. Anyhow, here's the hotel."
Two hours later, when uncle and nephew met in the private sitting-room where busy waiters were making preparations for dinner, Traill drew the younger man to the privacy of a window recess.
"Charlie," he confided, "affairs are in a tangle. Do you realize that my marriage was fixed for today?"
"That's so," was the laconic answer.
"Of course the wedding was postponed by fate, and, to add to my perplexities, there is a new attitude on Mrs. Vansittart's part. It puzzles me. We have been friends for some years, as you know. It seemed to be a perfectly natural outcome of our mutual liking for each other that we should agree to pass our declining years together. She is a very beautiful and accomplished woman, but she makes no secret of her age, and the match was a suitable one in every respect."