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 down Di's white shoulders, which Sam found the more fascinating.

"Dewdrops!" he poetized, admiringly.

Di failed to appreciate the embellishment and reached across Jello to slap at Irene, who struck back and clutched Di's hair.

"Ladies!" protested Jello, preserving strictest neutrality as he felt himself the prize' for the scratch and scramble. He wanted, however, Di to win him; and she did. At any rate, she was on the divan beside him; Irene was gone. Jello did not question why or where.

"Now you'n me have highball," he suggested comfortably.

"No," refused Di.

"How 'bout supper?"

"Supper," agreed Di.

With it, they had a drink or two, but Di did not let him become insensible. She had brought him home drunk, before; and she knew that there was nothing in a repetition of such an incident to force from brother Phil an O.K. to Sam's signed order. Jello was no aged widower and manufacturer from Wisconsin, to scare himself pink over a mere drink party; nor was Phil one to go into a panic for him.

When she left the party with him alone, he had a flask which, since it would have been surplusage in the studio, he had kept corked. Its contents were sufficient, in quantity and potency, to finish him for the night; and after Di refused it, he started at it.

From within the bend of his fat arm, she watched the flask and his lips. Let him gurgle a little more and his ex-