at him through her glasses and says,
'So you're Watts McHurdie--who wrote the--' 'The same, madam,' says
Watts, courting favour. 'Well,' says the high-browed one, 'well--you
are not at all what I imagined.' And 'Neither are you, madam,' returns
Watts, as sweet as a dill pickle; and she goes away to think it over
and wonder if he meant it that way. No--that's where Nellie made her
mistake. It wouldn't have hurt him--just once. But what's done's
done, and can't be undone, as the man said when he fished his wife out
of the lard vat."

Now this all seems a long way from John Barclay--the hero of this
romance. Yet the departure of Watts McHurdie for his scene of glory
was on the same day that a most important thing happened in the lives
of Bob Hendricks and Molly Brownwell. That day Bob Hendricks walked
one end of the station platform alone. The east-bound train was half
an hour late, and while the veterans were teasing Watts and the women
railing at Mrs. McHurdie, Hendricks discovered that it was one hundred
and seventy-eight steps from one end of the walk to the other, and
that to go entirely around the building made the distance fifty-four
steps more. It was almost train time before Adrian Brownwell arrived.
When the dapper little chap came with his bright crimson carnation,
and his flashing red necktie, and his inveterate gloves and cane,
Hendricks came only close enough to him to smell the perfume on the
man's clothes, and to nod to him. But when Hendricks found that the
man was going with the Culpeppers as far as Cleveland, as he told the
entire depot platform, "to report the trip," Hendricks sat on a
baggage truck beside the depot, and considered many things. As he was
sitting there Dolan came up, out of breath, and fearful he should be
late.

"How long will you be gone, Jake?" asked Hendricks.

"The matter of a week or ten days, maybe," answered Dolan.

"Well, Jake," said Hendricks, looking at Dolan with serious eyes, yet
rather abstractedly, "I am thinking of taking a long trip--to be gone
a long time--I don't know exactly how long. I may not go at all--I
haven't said anything to the boys in the store or the bank or out at
the shop about it; it isn't altogether settled--as yet." He paused
while a switch engine clanged by and the crowd surged out of the
depot, and ebbed back again into their seats. "Did you deliver my note
this morning?"

"Yes," replied Dolan, "just as you said. That's what made me a little
la