ontinued Mr.
Stuffer, "that he once provided plans and specifications to supply a
girl with beaus."

None of the company now seemed to doubt, so Mr. Stuffer proceeded to
prove his proposition that a technical education at Stevens comprehends
the repairing of difficult cases of side-stepped heart.

"Yes, I remember, now, it was the case of little Mary Schwarz," he
continued. "And she never knew, doesn't to this day probably, how it all
came about that suddenly she had more beaus than she could attend to.
They fairly froze her in ice cream--"

Mrs. Tescheron had recovered and was ringing three times for hot water
as per the card of instructions tacked near the push-button in her room.

"They are not remarkably prompt here," she murmured. "I wonder what can
be the matter every evening."

Mr. Stuffer, who was supposed to be on duty at the annunciator, in his
dual capacity of hall boy and host, heard not its alarm, for he was well
under way with a yarn.

He continued:

"She got so she didn't care for Hoboken, Mary didn't. The beaus then
took her to every theatre in New York. And they were a fine lot of
chaps--Stevens students, bachelor professors, leading merchants'
sons--all the best people in town. Before that Stevens student started
up the necessary machinery to repair this case, she had no beaus at all;
but he fixed things so's she had a regular monopoly because she
controlled the raw material. They teach just enough of political economy
on the side up there at the institute to bring that in; that you can't
have a monopoly unless you control the raw material; so he figured to
have her control it. But when she lost it the thing was off."

"What became of it?" asked Mr. Tescheron, who, I am informed, was
fearful that the narrator might be interrupted by the ringing of the
bell.

"She ate it up. You see, Brown, that smart Stevens man, who laid out
this job, went around to where Mary kept her little lamb and sheared it
every once so often. He gave the wool to our swellest tailor and had him
make it up into an extra fancy line of trousering. The best people
bought those trousers, and of course everywhere that Mary went the lamb
was sure to go. You can see why she had so much good company. The
fellows simply couldn't stop going to Mary's till they shed 'em. It took
a mechanical engineer to do it. But when the lamb got old her pa, who
had not been told about this thing, thought he'd have to eat the pet to
save its m