“Humph!” She looked at me suspiciously, but I was busy wiping off the tables.  “Well,” she said, holding up the glass Doctor Barnes had brought her, “it doesn’t cost me anything, so here goes.  But think of paying money for it!”

She drank it down in a gulp and settled herself in her chair.

“What’ll it do to me?” she asked.  “Mixed drinks always play the deuce with me, Barnes, and you know it.”

“If you’ll cut down your diet and take some exercise it will make you thin,” I began. “’The process is painless and certain:  kindly nature in her benevolent plan—­’”

“Give me another!” she interrupted, and Doctor Barnes filled her glass again.  “Some women spell fate f-a-t-e,” she said, looking at the water, “but I spell it without the e.”

She took half of it and then put down the glass.  “Honestly,” she declared, “I’d rather be fat.”

Mr. Pierce met them there a few minutes later and they had a three-cornered chat.  But Miss Summers evidently didn’t know just how much I knew and was careful of what she said.  Once, however, when I was in the pantry she thought I was beyond ear-shot.

“Good heavens, Pierce,” she said, “if they could put that in a play!”

“Cut it out, Julia,” Doctor Barnes snapped, and it wasn’t until they had gone that I knew she’d meant me.  I looked through the crack of the door and she was leaning over taking a puff at Doctor Barnes’ cigarette.

“Curious old world, isn’t it?” she said between puffs.  “Here we are the three of us—­snug and nice, having seven kinds of hell-fire water and not having to pay for it; three meals a day and afternoon tea ditto, good beds and steam-heat ditto—­and four days ago where were we?  Pierce, you were hocking your clothes!  Doc, you—­”

“Washing dishes!” he said.  “I never knew before how extravagant it is to have a saucer under a cup!”

“And I!” she went on, “I, Julia Summers, was staring at a ceiling in the Finleyville hotel, with a face that looked like a toy balloon.”

“And now,” said Doctor Barnes, “you are more beautiful than ever.  I am a successful physician—­oh, lord, Julia, if you’d hear me faking lines in my part!  And my young friend here—­Pierce—­Julia, Pierce has now become a young reprobate named Dicky Carter, and may the Lord have mercy on his soul!”

I tried to get out in time, but I was too late.  I saw her rise, saw the glass of water at her elbow roll over and smash on the floor, and saw her clutch wildly at Mr. Pierce’s shoulder.

“Not—­not dicky Carter!” she cried.

“Richard—­they call him Dick,” Mr. Pierce said uneasily, and loosened her fingers from his coat.

Oh, well, everybody knows it now—­how she called Mr. Dick everything in the calendar, and then began to cry and said nobody would ever know what she’d been through with, and the very dress she had on was a part of the trousseau she’d had made, and what with the dressmaker’s bills—­