ards he came to my open
door and remained for some moments bashfully looking at me. The next
day I found him standing by my chair in the piazza with an embarrassed
air and in utter inability to explain his conduct. At the end of a
rapid walk on the sand one morning, I was startled by the sound of
hurried breath, and looking around, discovered the staggering Warts
quite exhausted by endeavoring to keep up with me on his short legs.
At last the daily recurrence of his haunting presence forced a dreadful
suspicion upon me. Warts was courting ME for Sarah Walker! Yet it was
impossible to actually connect her with these mute attentions. "You
want me to give them to Sarah Walker," I said cheerfully one afternoon,
as he laid upon my desk some peculiarly uninviting crustacea which
looked not unlike a few detached excrescences from his own hands. He
shook his head decidedly. "I understand," I continued, confidently;
"you want me to keep them for her." "No," said Warts, doggedly. "Then
you only want me to tell her how nice they are?" The idea was
apparently so shamelessly true that he blushed himself hastily into the
passage, and ceased any future contribution. Naturally still more
ineffective was the slightest attempt to bring his devotion into the
physical presence of Sarah Walker. The most ingenious schemes to lure
him into my room while she was there failed utterly. Yet he must have
at one time basked in her baleful presence. "Do you like Warts?" I
asked her one day bluntly. "Yes," said Sarah Walker with cheerful
directness; "ain't HE got a lot of 'em?--though he used to have more.
But," she added reflectively, "do you know the little Ilsey boy?" I
was compelled to admit my ignorance. "Well!" she said with a
reminiscent sigh of satisfaction, "HE'S got only two toes on his left
foot--showed 'em to me. And he was born so." Need it be said that in
these few words I read the dismal sequel of Warts' unfortunate
attachment? His accidental eccentricity was no longer attractive. What
were his evanescent accretions, subject to improvement or removal,
beside the hereditary and settled malformations of his rival?

Once only, in this brief summer episode, did Sarah Walker attract the
impulsive and general sympathy of Greyport. It is only just to her
consistency to say it was through no fault of hers, unless a
characteristic exposure which brought on a chill and diphtheria could
be called her own act. Howbeit, towards