at once with the party.

One man told him--and looked him up and down. "Thought I knew all the
fellows," added the speaker, a middle-aged man, "but never ran into
you before. What's your rag?"

"'Town Gossip,'" replied the agreeable young gentleman.

"'Town Gossip'!" The old reporter gave a grunt of contempt. "And
you've come to interview Mrs. De Peyster?"

"Yes."

"First time I ever knew that leprous scandal-scavenger and
black-hander to send a man out in the open to get a story." Evidently
the old reporter, whom the others addressed as "colonel," had by his
long service acquired the privilege of surly out-spokenness. "Thought
'Town Gossip' specialized in butlers and ladies' maids and such--or
faked up its dope in the office."

"This is something special." The young gentleman's smiling but
unpresuming _camaraderie_ seemed unruffled by the colonel's blunt
contempt, and though they all drew apart from him he seemed to be
untroubled by his journalistic ostracism.

The next moment the door was opened by a stout, short-breathed
woman, hat, jacket, and black gloves on. All stepped in. The three
late-arriving reporters, seeing in the reception-room beyond a group
of newspapermen about a servant,--Matilda making her first futile
effort to rid the house of this pestilential horde, generaled by Mr.