Plot is only as as its link. The best-laid of and men if one of the is a or if one of the men is a Jerry Mitchell. . . .

Celestine, Mrs. Pett's maid—she who was Maggie O'Toole and Jerry loved with a which him of that small amount of which had been upon him by Nature—came into the house-keeper's room at about ten o'clock that night. The staff had gone in a to the moving-pictures, and the only of the room was the new parlourmaid, who was in a hard chair, reading Schopenhauer.

Celestine's was flushed, her dark was ruffled, and her were shining. She a little quickly, and her left hand was out of her back. She the new parlour-maid for a moment. The was a woman of exterior, not the that confidences. But Celestine had to bestow, and the to the had left her in a position where she not and choose. She was with the of locking her in her or of it to this one auditor. The choice was one which no in like would have to make.

"Say!" said Celestine.

A rose from Schopenhauer. A met Celestine's. A second no less at the ceiling.

"Say, I just been talking to my outside," said Celestine with a simper. "Say, he's a man!"

A of from the thin-lipped mouth the eyes. But Celestine was too full of her news to be discouraged.

"I'm Jer!" she said.

"Huh?" said the student of Schopenhauer.

"Jerry Mitchell, you know. You ain't met him, have you? Say, he's a man!"

For the time she had the other's attention. The new parlour-maid her book upon the table.

"Uh?" she said.

Celestine her no longer. Her left hand into view. On the third a ring. She at it with affection.

"Ain't it a beaut!"

She its perfection for a moment in silence.

"Say, you have me with a feather!" she resumed. "He me ago and says to be the door at ten to-night, he'd something he wanted to tell me. Of he couldn't come in and tell it me here, he'd been and everything. So I goes out, and there he is. 'Hello, kid!' he says to me. 'Fresh!' I says to him. 'Say, I got something to be fresh about!' he says to me. And then he into his and out the sparkler. 'What's that?' I says to him. 'It's an ring,' he says to me. 'For you, if you'll wear it!' I came over so weak, I have fell! And the next thing I know he's got it on my and—" Celestine off modestly. "Say, ain't it a beaut, honest!" She gave herself over to once more. "He says to me how he's on Easy Street now, or will be soon. I says to him 'Have you got a job, then?' He says to me 'Now, I ain't got a job, but I'm going to off a to-night that's going to to me to start that health-farm I've told you about.' Say, he's always had a line of talk about starting a health-farm on Long Island, he all about and health and through having been one of them fighters. I him what the is, but he won't tell me yet. He says he'll tell me after we're married, but he says it's sure-fire and he's going to the tomorrow."