ether, and squirmed a sad little squirm.

"Mr. Westoby," he said, "I once made use of a very strong expression in
regard to you. I said, if you remember, that I'd be obliged if you'd
keep your paws--"

"Don't apologize," I interrupted. "I forgot it long ago."

"You've taken me up wrong," he continued drearily. "I should like you to
consider the remark repeated now. Yes, sir, repeated."

"Oh, bosh!" I exclaimed.

"You have a very tough epidermis," he went on. "Quite the toughest
epidermis I have met with in my whole professional career. A paper
adequately treating your epidermis would make a sensation before any
medical society."

Somehow I couldn't feel properly insulted. The whole business struck me
as irresistibly comical. I lay back in my chair--my uninvited chair--and
roared with laughter.

I couldn't forbear asking him what treatment he'd recommend.

He pointed to the door, and said laconically: "Fresh air."

I retorted by laying the diamond locket before him.

"My dear fellow," I said, as he gazed at it transfixed, "don't let us go
on like a pair of fools. Eleanor charged me to give you this, and beg
you to return."

I don't believe he heard me at all. That flashing trinket was far more
eloquent than any words of mine. He laid his head in his hands beside
it, and his whole body trembled with emotion. He trembled and trembled,
till finally I got tired of waiting. I poked him in the back, and
reminded him that my car was waiting down stairs. He rose with a
strange, bewildered air, and submitted like a child to be led into the
street. He had the locket clenched in his hand, and every now and then
he would glance at it as though unable to believe his eyes. I shut him
into the tonneau, and took a seat beside my chauffeur.

"Let her out, James," I said.

James let her out with a vengeance. There was a sunny-haired housemaid
at the Van Coorts' ... and it was a crack, new, four-cylinder car with a
direct drive on the top speed. Off we went like the wind, jouncing poor
Jones around the tonneau like a pea in a pill-box. But he didn't care.
Was he not seraphically whizzing through space, obeying the diamond
telegram of love? In the gentle whizzle and bang of the whole
performance he even ventured to raise his voice in song, and I could
overhear him behind me, adding a lyrical finish to the hum of the
machinery. It was a walloping run, and we only throttled down on the
outskirts of Morristown. You see I had to