During this time Art, Literature, and Music were industriously engaged in the laudable enterprise of spending the unearned increment, in the course of which redistribution of wealth, they found the necessary encouragement from the more expensive sex. A round of gaiety set in such as the Arcadians had never known. Visits to restaurants and theaters became mere details of a daily routine. They gave a dance in the studio and plunged into the revelry of costume balls, then at its height; while, under the guidance of Belle Shaler, they made several excursions into the bohemia of Washington Square and Greenwich Village. In the inevitable pairing-off process, it transpired that, however they started forth, they returned home with Myrtle Popper snuggling close to O’Leary’s protecting bulk (she seemed particularly sensitive to the cold), Tootles tagging close to Pansy’s provoking shoulder, and Flick and Belle Shaler, who had quarreled from the start, walking six feet apart and stabbing each other with final deadly glances. Millie Brewster came to the parties in the studio, but seldom ventured forth on the marauding expeditions—not that she did not envy these rollicking sallies in wig and fancy dress, only she could not shake off the timidity and shyness which had grown about her in her months of isolation.

“Boys,” said King O’Leary, one morning, when from his couch he had watched Tootles’ mental control of Matter carrying him by successive jerks to the sink—“boys, I have a bit of news to break to you. I have been counting up, and there is just one more jamboree in sight.”

Flick awoke by one of those subconscious mental perceptions that the Society for Psychical Research is at present investigating.

“Broke?”

“King, tell us the worst.”

“Sixty-two dollars and some miserable change,” said O’Leary cheerfully, “is all that keeps us among the high rollers.”

A fearful suspicion flashed across Tootles’ ducal countenance as it dawned upon him that, though it was the first week of the month, no summons to pay the rent had yet appeared.

“King, you paid the rent!”

O’Leary did not deny it.

“How much?” said Flick faintly.

“A year.”

Tootles took this announcement very hard.

“It’s squandering money, that’s what it is,” he said bitterly.

“Why, damn it, man,” said Flick, equally outraged, “anything can happen—another uncle might die!”

“Well, it’s done,” said King O’Leary, without sign of penitence. “I’m getting tired of dissipation, anyhow. At least we have a roof over our heads.”

“We shall starve to death—like Croton water-bugs caught in a diamond casket,” said Flick, who had a taste for poetical flights.

“But, even then,” said Tootles, “even with that and the parties and the gorgeous presents, there ought to be three or four hundred left.” At this moment he caught sight of a guilty look on King O’Leary’s face. “Literature, I do believe he’s been and done some low-down, sneaking good action. What is it—paying rent for the whole floor?”

“Nothing of the sort,” said King O’Leary, but so gruffly that Tootles was confirmed in the idea that his guess had some pertinency.

“He’s been buying diamonds for Myrtle,” said Flick suspiciously.

“Well, here it is,” said King O’Leary, depositing a collection of bills and change upon the table. “What’ll we do with it?”

To his shame, Tootles, who had bourgeois inclinations, suggested that they should save it against the daily ache of the stomach.

“Never!” said Flick, with a withering look. “We have lived like dead-game sports, and we must end with a bang and not with a trickle.”

“Shake!” said King O’Leary.

“Well, what?” said Tootles glumly. “Oh, you fellows can grin; but I know what’s going to happen to me. That confounded money-eating little flirt of a Pansy will give me the royal shake the moment she gets wise.” When Tootles had a grief or a woe, he confided it to the world. “By Jove, I’ve made a fool enough of myself, running after her, when all I had to do was to sit quiet and condescend to let her feed out of my hand! Damn that Portuguese, Drinkwater! It was bad enough before—but now, O Lord!”

“I shall break my engagement to Belle,” said Flick facetiously. “Thank Heaven for one thing, she won’t come around any more.”

“We’ve wasted too much time, anyhow,” said King O’Leary, mistaking the sincerity of these professions. “As for me, I feel like getting back to doing something. I tell you what we’ll do: We’ll take the girls out once more, give them the greatest razzle-dazzle blowout they have ever seen, and then, when their eyes are bulging out and they are ready to melt in our arms, we’ll say, ‘Ladies, adoo forever!’”

“Then we’re to tell them we’re bust?” said Flick, to whom the bravado appealed.

“No,” said Tootles firmly; “let’s put it on high moral grounds. We must tell them that we have listened to the stern voice of ambition, that we are artists, and our professions are reclaiming us.”

“That means work,” said Flick.

“I have an idea for a masterpiece,” said Tootles, who, by the last speech, had recovered lost ground. “It’s to be called ‘The Ages Contemplating the Well-Dressed Man.’ It’s to be a monumental work. Who knows, it may bring another thousand!”

At noon, while they were perfecting their plans (Flick’s suggestion of dining at the St. Regis having been dismissed on account of King O’Leary’s hostility to boiled linen and social dog-collars), there came a timid tap-tap at the door, and, to the amazement of two members of the firm at least, Millie Brewster arrived with a broom and a dust-cloth.

“Can’t I be useful?” she said, dreadfully confused at her own daring. (She had studied over this opening for an hour.) “It’s only neighborly, isn’t it?”

King O’Leary sprang up rather quickly, and while Tootles’ eyes watched him with a dawning suspicion, he went to the girl and said with rough good nature:

“You certainly can—come right in and set to it. Give your orders, Millie—we’re here.”

But to the surprise of everybody, the girl pushed him away with determination, saying:

“Not at all. Sit down—please. You’ll only be in the way.”

“So that’s the way the wind blows,” thought Tootles, noticing the light that came into the childish face as she looked up at the rugged globe-trotter.

“Why, bless my soul, is this to be a habit, Millie?” said Flick encouragingly.

“Please—if you’ll let me,” she said eagerly.

Flick gave the permission with the air of one parting with a string of pearls. The three men, lounging over their morning pipes, followed with delicious satisfaction the young girl routing the dust, and such is the soul-delight that such rare feminine spectacles engender in the masculine mind, that they found her, all at once, amazingly young, graceful, and romantically pretty.

“There’s lots and lots of dust,” said Millie, shaking her head. “I can’t get it all out at once.”

“I should like to make a sketch of her bending down like that,” said Tootles pensively. “Beautiful line—charming!”

“What a cracking idea for a heroine,” said Flick, who was stirred to creative rashness.

O’Leary, who understood better than the others, leaned back dreamily, puffing in contentment.

At this moment the door opened, and Belle Shaler slouched in, in a manner which would have set the hearts of fashionable dÉbutantes afire with envy, and stopped short, her shocked hair whirling around her saucy face in amazement at the sight of Millie on a chair, caressing the dragon’s tail with a dust-cloth.

“For the love of Mike, woman, what’s struck you?” she exclaimed, though in somewhat stronger terms. “Degrading yourself for this bunch of loafers and sofa-warmers!”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” said Flick sweetly. “No one’s going to ask you.”

“Well, you certainly have got your nerve,” said Belle, mistaking the initiative. “If you want a slave, why don’t you get a wife?”

“Miss Brewster has offered to do it out of the kindness of her heart,” said King O’Leary, seeing Millie overcome with embarrassment.

“Sit down, Belle; we’re keeping the family mending for you.”

Before Belle could get her breath to retort, Millie broke in:

“Oh, please—I expected—I wanted to do that—really I did!”

The tone in which it was said struck each one. Each felt the loneliness from which the girl was struggling. Belle gave her a short look of amazement and then went up and put her arm around her with abrupt good nature, saying:

“Don’t mind my jawing. I’m a rough nut. Bless your heart, don’t worry; you shall do it!”

“’Pon my word,” said Flick aggressively, “who’s disposing of things around here?”

“I am,” said Belle, shrugging her shoulders.

“Angel, you’re wrong,” said Flick suavely. “If you want to know what makes woman an elevating force and a tender, inspiring ideal in the life of rough men, sit here and watch Millie.”

Belle Shaler slumped to the table, swung up on it, and lit a cigarette before she condescended to glance down at Flick.

“Say, I’ll bet that’s what you think,” she said, with her battling glance.

“A woman like Millie,” said Flick, from the cushions, watching dreamily the bustling progress of the housecleaning, “could make me a credit to society.”

“Ha, ha!” said Belle, and flicked away the ash of her cigarette with a scornful wave. “What you need, bo, is a hell-cat, a raring, tearing hell-cat with a rotten temper, to stand over you with a poker and whang you one. Then you’d work.”

“No, Belle; no,” said Flick, putting out his hand as though to ward her off. “I can not marry you.”

“Dog!” said Belle, and flung at him the nearest object at hand, which happened to be a saucer.

“I really do believe they’re fond of each other,” said Tootles, the acute observer.

“Oh, you’re no better,” said Belle, turning on him; “you’re worse. You’ve got brains and won’t use them. Lord, but I loathe a bunch of work-dodgers! I see your finish—a lot of sandwich-men beating the pavements.”

“What the devil does she come around here for?” said Flick, beginning to grow angry, “just as we were comfy?”

“Haven’t we been keeping you in luxury?” said O’Leary, arousing himself.

“Well, you’re a good bunch,” said Belle, relaxing a little, “but what I said goes. You’re a fine lithograph of ambition, you are—wallowing around like a lot of yellow dogs. Why don’t you get up and work?”

“Where’s Pansy?” said Tootles, to divert the attack.

“Out cooing with Drinkwater, I guess,” said Belle, who flounced off with this parting stab. “You don’t think she takes you seriously, do you? Why, you couldn’t support a canary!”

“Damn women, anyhow!” said Tootles, who winced perceptibly. “That’s what money does for you. They only come into your life to help you spend it, and then they make you miserable. Curse every one of them! Curse them one and all!”

“But curse Belle Shaler first,” said Flick.

“All except Millie,” said O’Leary, smiling.

“Well, except Millie.”

But, to their surprise, the girl, having finished what might be called her dust-survey, approached them and blurted out:

“Don’t be mad at her, Mr. Wilder. It’s because she cares for you she goes at you so.”

“Why, Millie, how do you know such things?” said Tootles, opening his eyes.

“Well, I do.”

“I do believe she agrees with Belle,” said O’Leary, who believed no such thing. “Come, now, the truth!”

Thus cornered, to their astonishment the girl looked very red and uncomfortable, but finally announced with a determined shake of her head:

“Well, yes; I do! I think she is absolutely right. And I think—I think you ought to be ashamed of yourselves, every one of you!”

When she had rushed away, overcome with her own daring, the three loungers looked helplessly at each other and then up at the skylight, as though to discover whence the bomb had fallen.

“I do believe we have touched these maidens’ hearts,” said Tootles, the first to break the silence.

“Never felt so gorgeously, deliciously happy in my life,” said Flick, in a melancholy tone. “Everything seemed just lovely with the world; I was just plain plumb glad to be alive—and then some one has to break in and shout, ‘Get up and work!’”

“Well, son, they’re right,” said O’Leary, jumping up and stretching his arms. “Guess millions don’t agree with us.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Flick.

“Flick,” said O’Leary solemnly, “Belle hits hard but she hits square. Son, you ought to be up and doing!”

“Why me any more than Tootles?”

“You’re older than I am,” said Tootles, who joined O’Leary in a withering contemplation of the joke-smith. “Besides, who cracks the jokes you sell?”

“So you’re all picking on me?” said Flick wrathfully. “All right; I’ll show you. And I won’t have to kill an uncle to do it, either,” he added, with a vindictive glance at O’Leary as he left the room.

“He’s gone out in search of puns,” said Tootles, who, after a moment’s whistling, added, “The party still on for to-night?”

“It’s our only salvation.”

“Well, I’ll go down and give the invitations,” said Tootles, who departed in quest of Pansy.

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