s in--married to a man who tells her he has another wife in order
to get free. Now, no really nice woman--"

"No really nice man--" Ina did say that much.

"Ah," said Dwight, "but _you_ could never be in such a position. No, no.
Lulu is sadly lacking somewhere."

Ina sighed, threw back her head, caught her lower lip with her upper, as
might be in a hem. "What if it was Di?" she supposed.

"Di!" Dwight's look rebuked his wife. "Di," he said, "was born with
ladylike feelings."

It was not yet ten o'clock. Bobby Larkin was permitted to stay until
ten. From the veranda came the indistinguishable murmur of those young
voices.

"Bobby," Di was saying within that murmur, "Bobby, you don't kiss me as
if you really wanted to kiss me, to-night."

VI

SEPTEMBER

The office of Dwight Herbert Deacon, Dentist, Gold Work a Speciality
(sic) in black lettering, and Justice of the Peace in gold, was above a
store which had been occupied by one unlucky tenant after another, and
had suffered long periods of vacancy when ladies' aid societies served
lunches there, under great white signs, badly lettered. Some months of
disuse were now broken by the news that the store had been let to a
music man. A music man, what on earth was that, Warbleton inquired.

The music man arrived, installed three pianos, and filled his window
with sheet music, as sung by many ladies who swung in hammocks or kissed
their hands on the music covers. While he was still moving in, Dwight
Herbert Deacon wandered downstairs and stood informally in the door of
the new store. The music man, a pleasant-faced chap of thirty-odd, was
rubbing at the face of a piano.

"Hello, there!" he said. "Can I sell you an upright?"

"If I can take it out in pulling your teeth, you can," Dwight replied.
"Or," said he, "I might marry you free, either one."

On this their friendship began. Thenceforth, when business was dull, the
idle hours of both men were beguiled with idle gossip.

"How the dickens did you think of pianos for a line?" Dwight asked him
once. "Now, my father was a dentist, so I came by it natural--never
entered my head to be anything else. But _pianos_--"

The music man--his name was Neil Cornish--threw up his chin in a boyish
fashion, and said he'd be jiggered if he knew. All up and down the
Warbleton main street, the chances are that the answer would sound the
same. "I'm studying law when I get the chance," said Cornish, as one who
makes a bid