ntley,
like myself. He's put them in my care. I'll answer for them." He saw the
girl's eyes; they spoke her thanks.

Mr. Quimby shook his head as one in a dream.

"All this is beyond me--way beyond," he ruminated. "Nothing like it ever
happened before that I've heard of. I'm going to write all about it to
Mr. Bentley, and I suppose I got to let you stay till I hear from him. I
think he ought to come up here, if he can."

"The more the merrier," said Mr. Magee, reflecting cheerfully that the
Bentleys were in Florida at last accounts.

"Come, mamma," said Miss Norton, rising, "let's go up and pick out a
suite. There's one I used to have a few years ago--you can see the
hermit's shack from the windows. By the way, Mr. Magee, will you send
Mr. Peters up to us? He may be able to help us get settled."

"Ahem," muttered Mr. Magee, "I--I'll have a talk with Peters. To be
quite frank, I anticipate trouble. You see, the Hermit of Baldpate
doesn't approve of women--"

"Don't approve of women," cried Mrs. Norton, her green eyes flashing.
"Why not, I'd like to know?"

"My dear madam," responded Mr. Magee, "only echo answers, and it but
vacuously repeats, 'Why not?'. That, however, is the situation. Mr.
Peters loathes the sex. I imagine that, until to-day, he was not
particularly happy in the examples of it he encountered. Why, he has
even gone so far as to undertake a book attributing all the trouble of
the world to woman."

"The idiot!" cried Mrs. Norton.

"Delicious!" laughed the girl.

"I shall ask Peters to serve you," said Magee. "I shall appeal to his
gallant side. But I must proceed gently. This is his first day as our
cook, and you know how necessary a good first impression is with a new
cook. I'll appeal to his better nature."

"Don't do it," cried the girl. "Don't emphasize us to him in any way, or
he may exercise his right as cook and leave. Just ignore us. We'll play
at being our own bell-boys."

"Ignore you," cried Mr. Magee. "What Herculean tasks you set. I'm not
equal to that one." He picked up their traveling-bags and led the way
up-stairs. "I'm something of a bell-boy myself, when roused," he said.

The girl selected suite seventeen, at the farther end of the corridor
from Magee's apartments. "It's the very one I used to have, years and
years ago--at least two or three years ago," she said. "Isn't it stupid?
All the furniture in a heap."

"And cold," said Mrs. Norton. "My land, I wish I was back by