and a scoundrel squarely
to the man's gray, smirking face and chattering teeth, and then had
reached down, and grabbed the trapped bribe-giver by the scruff of the
neck and literally thrown him out of the convention, while the crowd
went mad with applause? As he went home that night following the
convention, walking by the side of Dolan in silence, he wondered which
of all his _aliases_ he really was. At the gate of the Hendricks home
the two men stopped. Hendricks smiled quizzically as he asked: "Well,
I give it up, Jake. By the way, did you ever meet me?"

The brown eyes of the Irishman beamed an instant through the night,
before he hurried lightly down the street.

And so with all of this hide-and-seek of souls, now peering from
behind eyes and now far away patting one--two--three upon some
distant base, with all these queer goings-on inside of people here in
this strange world, it is no wonder that when the angels brought
Jeanette to the Barclays, they left her much to learn and many things
to study about. So she had to ask questions. But questions often
reveal more than answers. At least once they revealed much, when she
sat on the veranda of the Barclay home a fine spring evening with all
the company there. Aunt Molly was there; and Uncle Bob Hendricks was
there, the special guest of Grandma Barclay. Uncle Adrian was away on
a trip somewhere; but Uncle Colonel and Grandma Culpepper and all the
others were there listening to father's new German music-box, and no
one should blame a little girl, sitting shyly on the stone steps,
trying to make something out of the absurd world around her, if she
piped out when the talk stopped:--

"Mother, why does Aunt Molly cut off her lilac buds before they
bloom?"

And when her mother assured her that Aunt Molly did nothing of the
kind, and when Uncle Bob Hendricks looked up and saw Aunt Molly go
pale under her powder, and when Aunt Molly said, "Why, Jane--the
child must have dreamed that," no one in this wide world must blame a
little girl for opening her eyes as wide as she could, and lifting her
little voice as strongly as she could, and saying: "Why, Aunt Molly,
you know I saw you last night--when I stayed with you. You know I
did, 'cause I looked out of the window and spokened to you. You know I
did--don't you remember?" And no one must blame the mother for
shaking her finger at Jeanette, and no one must blame Jeanette for
sitting there shaking a protesting head, and sc