The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-09-12

nue.
 The red brick castle of Peletiah Petit grew was abla1e with brilliant illumina- ton when Webioot sought admittance through the welcoming porteullis. High revelry ruled within, and the spray of South Side wit and the foam of Aldine square repartee flew fast and furious over an hundred and odd of chattering youth. ful guests, the second growth timber of a certain cluster of Chicago's social forest.
 Miss lmogen Pettigrew was giving soiree. The affair was, ostensibly, gotten up for the debut of quartette of young girls who had been craning their necks forward toward this event for a year or eighteen months. scarcely had Webfoot entered the house when he vas twitched into a side room by his stately mother, who anxiously inquired if he had ordered the ice cream and confectionery. Web foot had done that very thing and was surprised to learn that it had not yet ar rived.
 "The tables look just too lovely" ob- served Miss Mamie Van Van de Van, advancing on the arm of Imogen, and throwing love-freighted glance a, Web foot.
 "Then you must certainly remind one ofthe tables" replied the youth.
 Mamie Van Van de Van and the com plimentary Webfoot had first met at Waukesha, when tbe robins nested last. The two were supposed to be deeply in love, and it was we'll known that they were engaged. The reason it was so well known is revealed by the fact that Mamie had impaited the secret to a dear and in- innate friend who had sworn never to re- veal it. It is true that Mamie had been particeps criminis in dozen or more other little affairs of the heart. One, es- pecially unfortunate and soul-snapping with boot and shoe man named Lionel Lemuel Lynch, in the course of which Mir. Lynch anticipated three months sal. ary and a large percentage of the profits of the firm.
 Lionel was given free ride to Joliet, and just as the broken up Mamie was preparing to get her to a nunnery, she again wandered deeply into love with a young man connected with the threads in a State street retail haberdashery Mamie was all ready to elope with this Chevalier de Safety-Pln, when he was ac- cidentally pulled out of a Clark street gambling joint per order of the vigilant Austin Doyle, chief of police.
 Let us enter upon the gay, the gay. the festive scene, the halls, the halls of dazzling lightr' said Webfoot, offering his arm to Mamie, who disengaged her self from Imogen, and the affianced couple moved of into the drawing-room.
 Their entrance provoked the usual indis tinct buzz of curiosity so frequently ob- served in large and ill-regulated assem- plies. A short. haired young man, with thick lips, was executing arias from Girofle- -GiroAa on the piano groups of animated fashion plates of the male variety lounged in attitudes intended to be strictly striking; the quartette of girls in whose honor the Pettigrew soiree had been given, was the center of an admir- ing, ogling throng, and for an hour afte r the entrance of Mamie Van Van de Van. and Don Webfoot Pettigrew, there was the copious flow of words and congestion of ideas peculiar to such affairs.
 Suddenly the animated, bee-like hum ming ceased. So unexpectedly fell the solemn hush that 6shy-eyed youth, the bow of whose tie was working around to the back of his neck, was heard to shout into the ear of deaf young man with red hair:
 When you knock down all the pins you make rampse."
 But it was not this irrelevant observa- ton which renewed the now thoroughly excited buzz. It was the appearance of a strangely grotesque figure lmping down the center of the room arrayed in the very costume, the blue tights, the red doublet, the long -toed shoes and plumed hat of Prince Lore1z0 in the Mascotte." 1" Whoever the mystenous personape might be, he stopped and hoarsely muuered through the eye and nose-holes of his hideous mask:
 Bettina, bring me chair"
 No chair being immediately presented him, and no person seeming to be using the name of Beftiaa that evening, the figure luffed over to the port side of the room and growled 10 a consumptive young man in the fullest of full evening dress.