"Why, I never gave her a thought! She so plainly asked me to dance with her that I had to do it; but that was all. She is showily handsome and amusing enough in the daring way in which she talks, but nay, nay, not for me!"
More sounds of kissing, and then: "Now run on and all of you get dressed in a hurry so we can take a nice spin with Henry Ford and go to church before Miss Page has to be delivered over to the Dragon."
"What's that smell, Zebedee? The hall is reeking with a terrible odor," asked Dee, sniffing suspiciously.
"I can't imagine. I was afraid you and Dum and Miss Page had gone in for musk. The whole apartment is permeated with it." Dee went out into the little hall connecting the girls' bedroom with the living room and poked around the hatrack, where the odor seemed to be strongest.
"Here it is," she cried, "in your overcoat pocket!"
"Oh, that wretched girl's gloves! She asked me to hold them for her just before we left the club, and I must have put them in my pocket. Hang 'em outside the bathroom window. That smell is enough to make all of us faint. Please turn my pocket inside out, so it can air."
"What did I tell you?" and Dee burst into the bedroom, waving the smelly gloves as she came; "the minx made Zebedee keep her gloves just so she could get around here. We'd better dress in a hurry so we can be ready to receive her. She might eat up poor Zebedee without his knowing what got him," and she scornfully hung the offensive kids out the bathroom window.
Mabel Binks did come before Dum and I were quite dressed, but Dee was installed in the living room waiting for her with Brindle at her side ready to sic on Mabel if she showed signs of walking off with the handsome young father.
"Oh, you naughty man, I am almost sure you purloined my gloves last night!" we heard her say, in her loud and strident tones. "I thought I would stop in on the way to church to get them."
"Yes, he did hook them from you," said Dum, making her appearance like a whirlwind. "Zebedee is great on that. He steals girls' gloves all the time and gives them to Dee and me. We never have to buy any. All the girls get him to hold their gloves for them and then he brings them home to us and we divide them up. Here yours are. Zebedee did not know whose they were, but we recognized the perfume you are so fond of. They are too big for us, so we were not going to row over them." Mr. Tucker sat dumfounded during this tirade of Dum's, and as for me, I had to dive back in the room from which I was emerging to get my countenance straightened out.