d everything to return and find
that he had missed an old friend whom he thought so much of.

Hosmer could not say precisely when they would leave. He was in
present negotiation with a person who wanted to rent the house,
furnished; and just as soon as he could arrange a few business
details, and Fanny could gather such belongings as she wished to take
with her they would go.

"You seem mighty struck on Dave Hosmer, all of a sudden," remarked
Mrs. Worthington to her friend, as the two crossed over the street. "A
feller without any more feelings than a stick; it's what I always said
about him."

"Oh, I always did like Hosmer," replied Mrs. Dawson. "But I thought he
had more sense than to tie himself to that little gump again, after
he'd had the luck to get rid of her."

A few days later Jack came home. His return was made palpable to the
entire neighborhood; for no cab ever announced itself with quite the
dash and clatter and bang of door that Jack's cabs did.

The driver had staggered behind him under the weight of the huge
yellow valise, and had been liberally paid for the service.

Immediately the windows were thrown wide open, and the lace curtains
drawn aside until no smallest vestige of them remained visible from
the street. A condition of things which Mrs. Worthington upstairs
bitterly resented, and naturally, spoiling as it necessarily did, the
general _coup d'oeil_ of the flat to passers-by. But Mrs. Dawson had
won her husband's esteem by just such acts as this one of amiable
permission to ventilate the house according to methods of his own and
essentially masculine; regardless of dust that might be flying, or sun
that might be shining with disastrous results to the parlor carpet.

Clouds of tobacco smoke were seen to issue from the open windows.
Those neighbors whose openings commanded a view of the Dawson's
alley-gate might have noted the hired girl starting for the grocery
with unusual animation of step, and returning with her basket well
stocked with beer and soda bottles--a provision made against a need
for "dutch-cocktails," likely to assail Jack during his hours of
domesticity.

In the evening the same hired girl, breathless from the multiplicity
of errands which she had accomplished during the day, appeared at the
Hosmers with a message that Mrs. Dawson wanted them to "come over."

They were preparing to leave on the morrow, but concluded that they
could spare a few moments in which to bid adi