The others looked expectantly at him, and Judith, catching the infection, slipped over to him and taking him gently by the ears, turned his head directly toward them.

"You may as well tell us, Mr. Bruce," she urged firmly. "We haven't any time to waste this evening on conundrums, you know."

Elinor suddenly seemed enlightened. "Oh, I think I know—" she began, when Bruce interrupted her.

"No, you don't know it all," he announced loudly, as if fearful that the news might come from some other source. "You may know that I was going to order dinner served here in the studio, and you might guess that it was to be a very festive one, but you couldn't possibly foresee who was to share the humble board with us, no, not if you guessed a hundred years."

"Pooh, I'm sure I could do it in one little hour if I tried," laughed Patricia. "We don't know such a horde of people that it would take long to run over every name we know."

"Oh, don't try, please don't!" cried Judith in alarm, lest valuable time be lost. "Tell us, Bruce, do, Mrs. Nat hates to haggle over news."

There was a merry outcry at this transparent plea and then Bruce, with a pretense of reluctance, gave in.

"We're going to have dinner here in the studio with real waiters, Judy, and a bunch of flowers for each lady—don't interrupt, please, till I've done. A bunch of violets for you and Elinor and Mrs. Spicer and the happy song-bird there, and also for Miss Margaret Howes and Mrs. Hiram Todd."

There was such a chorus of questions that Bruce held up his hands in protest.

"Give me time, and I'll confess all," he entreated. "Don't be too hard on a poor solitary man-body. Remember, you're four to one, and be easy. I had asked the Todds for a surprise to you all, and today I met Miss Howes on the street—just back in town and honing for a sight of old friends, and I nailed her on the spot. Fortunately I could get them all on the phone and they one and all bubbled with joy at the prospect of a quiet little dinner in the shelter of our roof-tree. Margaret Howes is sick of hotel life and Mrs. Todd isn't quite acclimated to it yet."

Mrs. Spicer shook her head. "We didn't even know there was a Mrs. Hiram," she said with a chuckle. "When did it happen?"

"The very day after you left," replied Elinor. "They went to Washington—Hiram had some more business there—and Marian had the time of her life. She looks like a different girl, too. She's taken Hiram in hand already, and he is beginning to seem like other people. She told me the day we called on them here that she had given all of Hiram's wedding outfit to the Salvation Army, and she meant to fit him out right here in New York."

Patricia puckered her brow. "I thought Hiram was very well as he was," she said doubtfully. "He was the sort that couldn't be much changed, and it seems silly to deck him out——"

Bruce interrupted her. "That isn't the idea, my dear Pat," he explained, smiling. "Marian says Hiram has too much brains to look like a scarecrow for ignorant people to look down on, so she's making him fit, merely to enlighten them as to his merit."

Patricia was silenced, though not yet convinced. She turned to the subject of Margaret Howes with eager interest, asking all sorts of questions as to her progress in painting and her appearance and her life of the past year, to none of which Bruce would answer a word, even though urged by Elinor.

"Wait and find out for yourselves," he said teasingly. "It would take off the bloom if I recounted all."

Elinor rose to lead the way to the rooms where they would dress. "I don't believe he knows a single thing," she said emphatically. "Margaret isn't a chatterbox and it was too bitterly cold on the streets today for any lengthy confidences. Come along and get into your festive togs—we don't want to miss a single minute, and dinner is very early tonight."

As Patricia followed the others out she bent gratefully over Bruce's chair. Her large gray eyes were shining in the rosy firelight and her face was sweetly serious.

"You're awfully good to me, Bruce," she said in a low tone. "I don't deserve it one scrap—but I'll try all the harder to be worth while some day."

Bruce looked up with his nicest smile and laid his strong hand over hers on his chair-arm.

"You're very much worth while now—to me, Patsy dear," he said with genuine affection. "I'm not looking ahead to those future days. Who knows whether the success, when it comes, will make you nearer to us, or will take you far away——"

She broke in eagerly with her hand pressed on her quickly beating heart. "Oh, Bruce," she said with a little tinge of fear in her tone. "I'm sometimes so afraid of that—losing you all in the work and hurry that is coming to me. But you'll help me, won't you? You'll keep me remembering how much we've always despised conceited, stuck-up people? I may be a failure after all, but if I'm not, if I'm the tiniest bit of a success and you see me getting selfish and horrid, you'll try to remind me, won't you?"

Bruce smiled reassuringly up at her flushed face. "Rely on me to puncture your balloon if it's needed, Miss Pat," he said in a tone that was very comforting, and, as she dropped a light kiss on his dark, waving hair, he added more soberly, "It's a mighty hard thing for a singer to be unselfish and generous, I warn you, my dear. It's going to be a struggle sometimes, though I don't doubt for an instant that you'll win out with flying colors."

Patricia's gayety was surging back in a happy flood, and she straightened up with a little rippling laugh, casting all her shadowy fears behind her.

"Just you wait till I sing my first concert, Mr. Bruce Hayden," she challenged, "and then tell me I'm a conceited goose, if you dare. I wagger as Hannah Ann says, I'll be the same stupid, silly thing I am now." And nodding brightly at him, she danced after the others, humming a gay little tune as she went.

Although Patricia would have been very well entertained with a quiet tea all to themselves in the studio, since there was so much to be talked over, so many plans to be made and such hopes to be indulged in, nevertheless she was obliged to confess that she had never had a jollier time in her life than at the dinner that night.

While they were dressing, the table was laid and some tall palms placed in the corners of the room just where they made the best effect, and when they came into the studio again the whole scene was of the most restive sort. Flowers on the tables and candles twinkling everywhere, the tapestries and screens of the shadowy backgrounds, the gleam of copper and brass, all mingled in a delightful whole which would have been hard to equal by any hotel, however well appointed.

Judith gave an exclamation of pleasure as she stood on the threshold.

"Why, it's the very nicest place in the world to celebrate in!" she said warmly. "You ought to be an awfully great singer, Miss Pat, when you're starting off with such lovely doings."

Patricia screwed up her face into a mocking protest and had opened her lips, when the sound of the elevator made them start eagerly to the door.

Margaret Howes knocked before they could fling it open, but they had her inside and were hugging her and shaking hands recklessly ere Bruce could hurry out to see who had knocked.

Margaret, in a long cloak and with her dark hair