u suppose you could find it?" I said, as gently as possible.

"I can try," he said.

"I think it is in a box about this shape--see?--a gray box, in the attic
closet, the farthest-in corner."

"Are you sure it's in the house? If it's in the house, I think I can find
it."

"Yes, I'm sure of that."

When he returned that night, his face wore a look of satisfaction very
imperfectly concealed beneath a mask of nonchalance.

"_Good_ for you! Was it where I said?"

"No."

"Was it in a different corner?"

"No."

"Where was it?"

"It wasn't in a corner at all. It wasn't in that closet."

"It wasn't! Where, then?"

"Downstairs in the hall closet." He paused, then could not forbear adding,
"And it wasn't in a gray box; it was in a big hat-box with violets all
over it."

"Why, _Jonathan!_ Aren't you grand! How did you ever find it? I couldn't
have done better myself."

Under such praise he expanded. "The fact is," he said confidentially, "I
had given it up. And then suddenly I changed my mind. I said to myself,
'Jonathan, don't be a man! Think what she'd do if she were here now.' And
then I got busy and found it."

"Jonathan!" I could almost have wept if I had not been laughing.

"Well," he said, proud, yet rather sheepish, "what is there so funny about
that? I gave up half a day to it."

"Funny! It isn't funny--exactly. You don't mind my laughing a little? Why,
you've lived down the fountain pen--we'll forget the pen--"

"Oh, no, you won't forget the pen either," he said, with a certain
pleasant grimness.

"Well, perhaps not--of course it would be a pity to forget that. Suppose I
say, then, that we'll always regard the pen in the light of the violet
hat-box?"

"I think that might do." Then he had an alarming afterthought. "But, see
here--you won't expect me to do things like that often?"

"Dear me, no! People can't live always on their highest levels. Perhaps
you'll _never_ do it again." Jonathan looked distinctly relieved. "I'll
accept it as a unique effort--like Dante's angel and Raphael's sonnet."

"Jonathan," I said that evening, "what do you know about St. Anthony of
Padua?"

"Not much."

"Well, you ought to. He helped you to-day. He's the saint who helps people
to find lost articles. Every man ought to take him as a patron saint."

"And do you know which saint it is who helps people to find lost
virtues--like humility, for instance?"

"No. I don't, really."

"I didn't suppose you did,"