"Yes!" groaned Hawkins, depositing his keg on the floor. "But we'll get the best of it. William, bring up a wash-tub full of water! Mary, go get all the washrags in the house! Quick!"

The homely household articles arrived within a minute or two.

"Now," continued Hawkins, dumping half the keg into the tub. "That's baking soda. It'll neutralize the acid. Here, everybody. Dip a rag in here and wash off the acid.

"Oh, hang propriety and decency and conventionality and all the rest of it!" he vociferated as some of the ladies, quite warrantably hung back.

"Get at the acid before it gets at you! Don't you--can't you understand?

It'll burn into your skin in a little while! Come on!"

There was no hesitation after that. Men and women alike made frantically for the tub, dipped cloths in the liquid, and laved industriously hands and arms and cheeks that were already sore and burning.

Picture the scene: a dozen women in evening dress, a dozen men in "swallow-tails," cl.u.s.tered around a wash-tub there in Hawkins' parlor, working for dear life with the soaking cloths.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_It was just the sort of thing that could happen under Hawkins' roof, and nowhere else_."]

Ludicrous, impossible, it was just the sort of thing that could happen under Hawkins' roof and nowhere else--barring perhaps a retreat for the insane.

Later the excitement subsided. The ladies, disheveled as to hair, carrying costumes whose glory had departed forever, retired to the chambers above for such further repairs as might be possible. The men, too, under William's guidance, went to draw upon Hawkins' wardrobe for clothes in which to return home.

The inventor, Mr. Blodgett, and myself were left together in the drawing-room.

That amiable old gentleman's coat--he is bitterly averse to undue expenditure for clothes--had turned to a pale, rotting green.

"Well, it's a good thing that was diluted acid instead of strong, isn't it, Griggs?" remarked Hawkins. "Originally I had intended using the strong acid, you know, for the reason----"

"Aaaah!" cried Mr. Blodgett. "So that was more of your imbecile inventing, was it? Fire-extinguisher! Bah! I thought n.o.body but you could have conceived the idea like that! What under the sun did you let off your infernal contrivance for?"

"Oh, I just did it to spite you, papa," said Hawkins, with weary sarcasm.

"By George, sir, I believe you did!" snapped the old gentleman. "It's like you! Look at my coat, sir! Look at----"

I was edging away when Mrs. Hawkins entered. She was clad in somber black now, and her cheeks flamed scarlet with mortification.

"Well!" she exclaimed.

"Well, my dear?" said Hawkins, bracing himself.

"A pretty mess you've made of our house-warming, haven't you? You and your idiotic fire-extinguisher!"

"Madam, my Chemico-Sprinkler System is one----"

"And not only the evening spoiled, and half our friends so enraged at you that they'll never enter the house again, but do you know what you'll have to pay for? Miss Mather's dress alone, I happen to know, cost two hundred dollars! And Mrs. Gordon's gown came from Paris last week--four hundred and fifty! And I was with Nellie Ridgeway the day she bought that white satin dress she had on. It cost----"

"Glad of it!" interposed Blodgett, with a fiendish chuckle. "Serves him jolly well right! If you'd listened to me fifteen years ago, Edith, when I told you not to marry that fool----"

"Griggs! W-w-w-where are you going?" Hawkins called weakly.

"Home!" I said decidedly, making for the hall. "I think my wife's ready.

And I'm afraid my hair's loosening up, too, where your fire-extinguisher wet it. Good-night!"

CHAPTER X.

"It's a good while since you've invented anything, isn't it, Hawkins?" I had said the night before.

"Um-um," Hawkins had murmured.

"Must be two months?"

"Ah?" Hawkins had smiled.

"What is it? Life insurance companies on to you?"

"Um-ah," Hawkins had replied.

"Or have you really given it up for good? It can't be, can it?"

"Oh-ho," Hawkins had yawned, and there I stopped questioning him.

Satan himself must have concocted the business which sent me--or started me--toward Philadelphia next morning. Perhaps, though, the railroad company was as much to blame; they should have known better.

The man in the moon was no further from my thoughts than Hawkins as I stepped ash.o.r.e on the Jersey side of the ferry to take the train. Yet there stood Hawkins in the station.

He seemed to be fussing violently as he lingered by the door of one of the offices. Unperceived, I came close enough to hear him murmur thrice in succession something about "blamed nonsense--devilish red-tape."

Surely something had worked him up. I wondered what it was.

As I watched, an apologetic-looking youth appeared in the door of the office and handed Hawkins an official-appearing slip of paper.

The inventor s.n.a.t.c.hed it impolitely and turned his back, while the youth gazed after him for a moment and then returned to the office.

"Set of confounded idiots!" Hawkins remarked wrathfully.

Then, ere I could disappear, he spied me.

"Aha, Griggs, you here?"

"No, I'm not," I said flatly. "If there's any trouble brewing, Hawkins, consider me back in New York. What has excited you?"

"Excited me? Those fool railroad officials are enough to drive a man to the asylum. Did you see how they kept me standing outside that door?"

"Well, did you want to stand inside the door, Hawkins?"

"I didn't want to stand anywhere in the neighborhood of their infernal door! The idea of making me get a permit to ride on an engine! Me!"