ng time. My name's Byrd--Beverley Byrd--and I wish you'd come
and see me some time. Good-by. I hope I haven't bored you with all my
war-talk. I lost a grandfather and three uncles in it, and I can't help
being interested."

The last of the parade went by; the dense crowd broke and overran the
street; and Queed stood upon the bottom step taking his leave of Miss
Weyland. Much interested, he had lingered till the other guests were
gone; and now there was nobody upon the porch but Miss Weyland's mother
and grandmother, who sat at the further end of it, the eyes of both, did
Mr. Queed but know it, upon him.

"Why don't you come to see me sometimes?" the daughter and granddaughter
was saying sweetly. "I think you will have to come now, for this was a
party, and a party calls for a party-call. Oh, can you make as clever a
pun as that?"

"Thank you--but I never pay calls."

"Oh, but you are beginning to do a good many things that you never did
before."

"Yes," he answered with curious depression. "I am."

"Well, don't look so glum about it. You mustn't think that any change in
your ways of doing is necessarily for the worse!"

He refused to take up the cudgels; an uncanny thing from him. "Well! I
am obliged to you for inviting me here to-day. It has been interesting
and--instructive."

"And now you have got us all neatly docketed on your sociological
operating table, I suppose?"

"I am inclined to think," he said slowly, "that it is you who have got
me on the operating table again."

He gave her a quick glance, at once the unhappiest and the most human
look that she had ever seen upon his face.

"No," said she, gently,--"if you are on the table, you have put yourself
there this time."

"Well, good-by--"

"And are you coming to see me--to pay your party-call?"

"Why should I? What is the point of these conventions--these little
rules--?"

"Don't you _like_ being with me? Don't you get a _great deal_ of
pleasure from my society?"

"I have never asked myself such a question."

He was gazing at her for a third time; and a startled look sprang
suddenly into his eyes. It was plain that he was asking himself such a
question now. A curious change passed over his face; a kind of dawning
consciousness which, it was obvious, embarrassed him to the point of
torture, while he resolutely declined to flinch at it.

"Yes--I get pleasure from your society."

The admission turned him rather white, but he saved himself