es, but she refused to accept any unknown
Sipperley as a satisfactory alternative for Uncle Chris.

"I don't want Mr. Sipperley. I want Major Selby."

"Howja spell it once more?"

"S-e-l-b-y."

"S-e-l-b-y. No one of that name living here. Mr. Sipperley--" he spoke
in a wheedling voice, as if determined, in spite of herself, to make
Jill see what was in her best interests--"Mr. Sipperley's on the
fourth floor. Gentleman in the real estate business," he added
insinuatingly. "He's got blond hair and a Boston bull-dog."

"He may be all you say, and he may have a dozen bull-dogs...."

"Only one. Jack his name is."

"... But he isn't the right man. It's absurd. Major Selby wrote to me
from this address. This _is_ Eighteen East Fifty-seventh Street?"

"This is Eighteen East Fifty-seventh Street," conceded the other
cautiously.

"I've got his letter here." She opened her bag, and gave an
exclamation of dismay. "It's gone!"

"Mr. Sipperley used to have a friend staying with him last Fall. A Mr.
Robertson. Dark-complexioned man with a moustache."

"I took it out to look at the address, and I was sure I put it back. I
must have dropped it."

"There's a Mr. Rainsby on the seventh floor. He's a broker down on
Wall Street. Short man with an impediment in his speech."

Jill snapped the clasp of her bag.

"Never mind," she said. "I must have made a mistake. I was quite sure
that this was the address, but it evidently isn't. Thank you so much.
I'm so sorry to have bothered you."

She walked away, leaving the Terror of Paraguay and all points west
speechless: for people who said "Thank you so much" to him were even
rarer than those who said "please." He followed her with an
affectionate eye till she was out of sight, then, restoring his
chewing-gum to circulation, returned to the perusal of his paper. A
momentary suggestion presented itself to his mind that what Jill had
really wanted was Mr. Willoughby on the eighth floor, but it was too
late to say so now; and soon, becoming absorbed in the narrative of a
spirited householder in Kansas who had run amuck with a hatchet and
slain six, he dismissed the matter from his mind.

III

Jill walked back to Fifth Avenue, crossed it, and made her way
thoughtfully along the breezy street which, flanked on one side by the
Park and on the other by the green-roofed Plaza Hotel and the
apartment houses of the wealthy, ends in the humbler and more
democratic spaces of Columbus C