filling out any other five-year-olds clothes."

"My hands--they're all gone," remarked the child, holding out his arms.
The blue sleeves did, indeed, cover them to the finger-tips. Laughing,
Burns rolled the cloth back, making an awkward bunch at the wrist, but
allowing the small hands freedom.

"When Mrs. Lessing trains her eye on you she'll want to make time
getting to the shops," Burns observed, struggling with the scarlet scarf
and finally tying it like a four-in-hand. "But you're clean, Bob, and
hungry, I hope. Now I want a great big hug to pay me for dressing you."

He held out his arms, and his new charge sprang into them, pressing arms
like sticks around the strong neck of the man who seemed to him already
the best friend he had in the world--as he was.

At eleven o'clock, a round of calls made, the Green Imp came for Bob
and Mrs. Lessing. They met him, hand in hand, the little figure in its
voluminous misfit clothes looking quaint, enough beside the perfect
outlines of his companion's attire. But both faces were very happy.

"How many dollars do you suppose Ellen has, stowed away in that handsome
purse of hers, ready to spend on the child?" Martha Macauley queried
of Winifred Chester as they watched the Green Imp out of sight from the
Macauley porch.

Mrs. Chester shook her head. "I've no idea. She'll want to get him
everything a child could have. But Red won't let her."

"He won't know. He'll drop them at a store and go off to the hospital.
The things will come home by special delivery, and the next thing he
sees will be Bob in silk socks and white linen."

"I don't believe it. He'll go shopping with them. He's wild over the
boy, and he doesn't care a straw what people might think who saw the
three together. He'll tyrannize over Ellen--and she'll let him, for the
pleasure of being ruled by a man once more!"

It was a shrewd prophecy and goes to show that women really understand
each other pretty well--women of the same sort. For Red Pepper Burns did
go shopping with the pair from start to finish. It was an experience he
did not see any, occasion for missing.

"You won't mind my coming, too?" was all the permission he asked, and
Mrs. Lessing answered simply: "Surely not, if you care to. We shall want
your judgment."

She had not conducted them to a department store, but to the small shop
of a decidedly exclusive children's outfitter. Burns knew nothing about
the presumably greater cost of buying a w