. He
lacked none of that subtle humor so familiar in child-life. Heavens! the
deeds I could (if I dared) enumerate. They turned him loose among the
comic supplements one Sunday, and after that it was all over.

Hadn't he emptied his grandma's medicine capsules and substituted
cotton? And hadn't dear old grandma come down stairs three days later,
saying that she felt much improved? Hadn't he beaten out the brains of
his toy bank and bought up the peanut man on the corner? Yes, indeed!
And hadn't he taken my few letters from his sister's desk and played
postman up and down the street? His papa thought it all a huge joke till
one of the neighbors brought back a dunning dressmaker's bill that had
lain on the said neighbor's porch. It was altogether a different matter
then. Toddy-One-Boy crawled under the bed that night, and only his
mother's tears saved him from a hiding.

All these I thought over as I sat at my table. She knew that I would
have gone had it been possible. Women and logic are only cousins german.
Six months ago I hadn't been in love with any one but myself, and now
the Virgil of love's dream was leading me like a new Dante through _his_
Inferno, and was pointing out the foster-brother of Sisyphus (if he had
a foster-brother), pushing the stone of my lady's favor up the steeps of
Forlorn Hope. Well, I would go up to the club, and if I didn't get home
till mor-r-ning, who was there to care?

The Frenchman had gone, and the benevolent old gentleman. The crowd was
thinning out. The young man at my left rose, and I rose also. We both
stared thoughtfully at the hat-rack. There hung two hats: an opera-hat
and a dilapidated old stovepipe. The young fellow reached up and, quite
naturally, selected the opera-hat. He glanced into it, and immediately a
wrinkle of annoyance darkened his brow. He held the hat toward me.

"Is this yours?" he asked.

I looked at the label.

"No." The wrinkle of annoyance sprang from his brow to mine. My
opera-hat had cost me eight dollars.

The young fellow laughed rather lamely. "Do you live in New York?" he
asked.

I nodded.

"So do I," he continued; "and yet it is evident that both of us have
been neatly caught." He thought for a moment, then brightened. "I'll
tell you what; let's match for the good one."

I gazed indignantly at the rusty stovepipe. "Done!" said I.

I lost; I knew that I should; and the young fellow walked off with the
good hat. Then, with the relic in my h