a care-taker!" burst out Mrs. Cecil Jerome. "While our care-taker was living in the basement, burglars got through our scuttle and robbed all the upper part of the house!"

"You make a great mistake," said Mrs. Danielson.

"Don't you know about the Holmes Company? They have wired our house every year since that experience with our servants—why, it's ten years now! It is the only way to leave your house during the summer." I heard the other day, said a handsome woman joining the group, "that, that company had opened offices of their own all through the city this year and they will not hereafter connect houses with the District Telegraph offices, so you see their service is going to be a hundred per cent. better than it has ever been before."

"You better wire your house, Mrs. Christy," said Mrs. Danielson, "you'll feel perfectly safe then. An awfully funny thing happened to me when ours was first done! Mr. Danielson neglected to have my signature on the coupon and I came up from Newport and couldn't get into my own house! I was raging at the time, but when I thought it over afterward it convinced me how secure the protection is."

"Was it really true that your care-taker took boarders in your house while you were in Europe a few years ago," asked Mrs. Norman, turning to a newcomer who had joined them.

"Yes, we had it wired the minute we found it out. It put a stop to that sort of thing!" returned the woman emphatically.

"I never heard of such things!" gasped Mrs. Christy.

"I didn't know they would dare!"

"Dare? They dare anything!" snapped a tall girl in green.

"Well, I shall have it wired the instant we go," said Mrs. Christy conclusively. "I did not know there was any company who did that sort of thing. I am perfectly relieved to solve the problem!"

She went on into the drawing-room and the groups of guests at the tables gradually broke up and followed making their adieux.

The instant Mrs. Reginald Norman reached home she called Mrs. Danielson up on the telephone.

"What did you think of it, Ethel?" she asked eagerly.

"It was a lovely party! All in such good taste, didn't you think so?" returned Ethel Danielson. "Mrs. Christy, too, made a much better appearance than I expected. She has a good deal of savoir faire already!"

"Yes, and she'll gain more as time goes on," replied Mrs. Norman. "How do you suppose she ever got the Schermerhorn's and the De Witts there."

"I can't imagine and it doesn't make much difference now, how she did it! I got my furs paid for which pleased me into the ground. Wouldn't we have been idiots to stay away? We should never have forgiven ourselves for from now on, Mrs. Christy is unquestionably in society. She has 'bridged it' in more senses than one!"

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. CHRISTY'S BRIDGE PARTY***

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