tion and
conditional approval went up.

The hostess rose with rather a frightened air. "Shall we leave them to
their tobacco?" she said to the other women.

When he went home the stop-gap celebrated his triumph to his wife. "I
don't think she'll ask you for the loan of me again to fill a place
without you."

"Yes," she answered, remotely. "You don't suppose she'll think we live
unhappily together?"

XVII

THE ESCAPADE OF A GRANDFATHER

"Well, what are you doing here?" the younger of the two sages asked,
with a resolute air of bonhomie, as he dragged himself over the
asphalt path, and sank, gasping, into the seat beside the other in the
Park. His senior lifted his head and looked him carefully over to make
sure of his identity, and then he said:

"I suppose, to answer your fatuous question, I am waiting here to get
my breath before I move on; and in the next place, I am watching the
feet of the women who go by in their high-heeled shoes."

"How long do you think it will take you to get your breath in the
atmosphere of these motors?" the younger sage pursued. "And you don't
imagine that these women are of the first fashion, do you?"

"No, but I imagine their shoes are. I have been calculating that their
average heel is from an inch and a half to two inches high, and
touches the ground in the circumference of a twenty-five-cent piece.
As you seem to be fond of asking questions, perhaps you will like to
answer one. Why do you think they do it?"

"Wear shoes like that?" the younger returned, cheerily, and laughed as
he added, "Because the rest do."

"Mmm!" the elder grumbled, not wholly pleased, and yet not refusing
the answer. He had been having a little touch of grippe, and was
somewhat broken from his wonted cynicism. He said: "It's very strange,
very sad. Just now there was such a pretty young girl, so sweet and
fine, went tottering by as helpless, in any exigency, as the daughter
of a thousand years of bound-feet Chinese women. While she tilted on,
the nice young fellow with her swept forward with one stride to her
three on the wide soles and low heels of nature-last boots, and kept
himself from out-walking her by a devotion that made him grit his
teeth. Probably she was wiser and better and brighter than he, but she
didn't look it; and I, who voted to give her the vote the other day,
had my misgivings. I think I shall satisfy myself for the next