"forty dollars isn't a
great deal of money, and a ready-made suit, just to begin with--"

Naturally, Mr. Baxter perceived whither she was drifting. "Forty dollars
isn't a thousand," he interrupted, "but what you want to throw it away
for? One reason a boy of seventeen oughtn't to have evening clothes
is the way he behaves with ANY clothes. Forty dollars! Why, only this
summer he sat down on Jane's open paint-box, twice in one week!"

"Well--Miss Pratt IS going away, and the dance will be her last night.
I'm afraid it would really hurt him to miss it. I remember once, before
we were engaged--that evening before papa took me abroad, and you--"

"It's no use, mamma," he said. "We were both in the twenties--why, _I_
was six years older than Willie, even then. There's no comparison at
all. I'll let him order a dress-suit on his twenty-first birthday and
not a minute before. I don't believe in it, and I intend to see that
he gets all this stuff out of his system. He's got to learn some hard
sense!"

Mrs. Baxter shook her head doubtfully, but she said no more. Perhaps she
regretted a little that she had caused Mr. Baxter's evening clothes to
be so expansively enlarged--for she looked rather regretful. She also
looked rather incomprehensible, not to say cryptic, during the long
silence which followed, and Mr. Baxter resumed his rocking, unaware of
the fixity of gaze which his wife maintained upon him--a thing the most
loyal will do sometimes.

The incomprehensible look disappeared before long; but the regretful
one was renewed in the mother's eyes whenever she caught glimpses of her
son, that day, and at the table, where William's manner was gentle--even
toward his heartless father.

Underneath that gentleness, the harried self of William was no longer
debating a desperate resolve, but had fixed upon it, and on the
following afternoon Jane chanced to be a witness of some resultant
actions. She came to her mother with an account of them.

"Mamma, what you s'pose Willie wants of those two ole market-baskets
that were down cellar?"

"Why, Jane?"

"Well, he carried 'em in his room, an' then he saw me lookin'; an' he
said, 'G'way from here!' an' shut the door. He looks so funny! What's he
want of those ole baskets, mamma?"

"I don't know. Perhaps he doesn't even know, himself, Jane."

But William did know, definitely. He had set the baskets upon chairs,
and now, with pale determination, he was proceeding to fill them. W