ught
what an unbusinesslike father he had. He sent a special letter of
thanks, just as he would have done to any benefactor; he was not of the
persuasion that everything is coming to the man who happens to be a son.

As a child saves the best bite of cake till the last, the New York
clerk stowed Frankie's letter in his pocket until he reached Coney
Island. He opened it as he sat on the sand, not far away from a group
of attractive girls. Frankie's mention of Perry caused Evan to take
note of a chilly breeze that was blowing over the surf. When the
letter persisted and persisted in Porter, he suddenly thought the sun
was mighty hot for June.

"Let her have him," the reader muttered; "she's welcome to him!"

Evan tried to make himself believe he had meant to say: "Let _him_ have
_her_," but that was not what he had said, and he knew it. He knew,
too, that he could not coax himself to say it.

"She makes me mad," he muttered again; "what does she see in that mutt?
Confound my head, what's the matter with it, anyway?"

Tearing the letter to bits, he ran into the surf. The girls had been
watching him read and had been laughing over the expression on his
face. They followed him into the water, and one of them managed to
slip over the ropes beside him. The others made a fuss; and, not being
used to swimming flirtations, Evan thought a real accident had
happened. He bravely swam under the rope and rescued the water-nymph.
An hour later, when they were all acquainted, he discovered that she
could out-do him thrice over as a swimmer. But he was glad to know
somebody in big, busy New York, and Ethel Harris was both pretty and
smart.

Thus it was that the ex-bankclerk came to pass over Frankie Arling's
letter, which had hurt him, and to take an interest in the pleasures of
the present. Frankie and Perry, like the Past, were gone into eclipse.

In the course of months Evan became fairly familiar with New York, and
with Miss Harris. The city stood scrutiny, and the girl--she was
mighty fine. There was this difference between Ethel and New York,
however: she was fathomable, as a girl should not be, and the city was
not. Madison Square always reminded Evan of a dream he had dreamt in
every fever of childhood--a nightmare in which a great wheel ran
smoothly and little wheels crookedly; ran until the sleeper's brain was
ready to burst with a sort of frenzy.

The people of New York turned out to be like the people o