"Who would they give it to?" I asks.
And yet when the maid lets us in hanged if the place ain't full of people, mostly young hicks in evenin' clothes, but with a fair sprinklin' of girls in flossy party dresses. All the livin' room furniture had been shoved into the dinin' room, the rugs rolled into the corners, and the music machine is grindin' out the Blitzen Blues, accompanied by the two mandolins.
In the midst of all this merry scene I finds Stanley wanderin' about sort of dazed and unhappy.
"Excuse us for crashin' in on a party," says I. "We came over with the idea that maybe Polly and Dot would be kind of lonesome."
"Lonesome!" says Stanley. "Say, I ask you, do they look it?"
"Not at the present writing," says I.
That was statin' the case mild, too. Over by the music machine Dot and a youth who's sportin' his first aviation mustache—one of them clipped eyebrow affairs—are tinklin' away on the mandolins with their heads close together, while in the middle of the floor Polly and a blond young gent who seems to be fairly well contented with himslf are practicin' some new foxtrot steps, with two other youngsters waitin' to cut in.
"Where did you round up all the perfectly good men?" I asks.
"I didn't," says Stanley. "That's what amazes me. Where did they all come from? Why, I supposed the girls didn't know a soul in the place. Said they didn't on the way out. Yet before we'd left the station two youths appeared who claimed they'd met Polly somewhere and asked if they couldn't come up that evening. The next morning they brought around two others, and some girls, for a motor trip. By afternoon the crowd had increased to a dozen, and they were all calling each other by their first names and speaking of the aggregation as 'the bunch.' I came home tonight to find a dinner party of six and this dance scheduled. Now tell me, how do they do it?"
"It's by me," says I. "But maybe this kid sister-in-law of yours and her chum are the kind who don't have to send out S. O. S. signals. And if this keeps up I judge you're let in for a merry two weeks."