r sewing upon the table and
rising. "Men never can find anything," she observed, additionally, as
she ascended the stairs. "Especially their own things!"

On this occasion, however, as she was obliged to admit a little later,
women were not more efficacious than the duller sex. Search high, search
low, no trace of Mr. Baxter's evening clothes were to be found. "Perhaps
William could find them," said Mrs. Baxter, a final confession of
helplessness.

But William was no more to be found than the missing apparel. William,
in fact, after spending some time in the lower back hall, listening to
the quest above, had just gone out through the kitchen door. And after
some ensuing futile efforts, Mr. Baxter was forced to proceed to his
club in the accoutrements of business.

He walked slowly, enjoying the full moon, which sailed up a river in the
sky--the open space between the trees that lined the street--and as
he passed the house of Mr. Parcher he noted the fine white shape of a
masculine evening bosom gleaming in the moonlight on the porch. A
dainty figure in white sat beside it, and there was another white figure
present, though this one was so small that Mr. Baxter did not see it at
all. It was the figure of a tiny doglet, and it reposed upon the black
masculine knees that belonged to the evening bosom.

Mr. Baxter heard a dulcet voice.

"He IS indifferink, isn't he, sweetest Flopit? Seriously, though,
Mr. Watson was telling me about you to-day. He says you're the most
indifferent man he knows. He says you don't care two minutes whether a
girl lives or dies. Isn't he a mean ole wicked sing, p'eshus Flopit!"

The reply was inaudible, and Mr. Baxter passed on, having recognized
nothing of his own.

"These YOUNG fellows don't have any trouble finding their dress-suits, I
guess," he murmured. "Not on a night like this!"

... Thus William, after a hard day, came to the gates of his romance,
entering those portals of the moon in triumph. At one stroke his dashing
raiment gave him high superiority over Johnnie Watson and other rivals
who might loom. But if he had known to what undoing this great coup
exposed him, it is probable that Mr. Baxter would have appeared at the
Emerson Club, that night, in evening clothes.

VIII

JANE

William's period of peculiar sensitiveness dated from that evening, and
Jane, in particular, caused him a great deal of anxiety. In fact, he
began to feel that Jane was a mortification