.
"I'm sorry it's good-bye," he said. "I have done my best to secure
your husband."

"You couldn't have tried harder than I did," the little woman
answered, and the tip-tilted nose looked quite pathetic; "for I just
hate to be buried right down there in Kentucky! However, Elihu is
the sort of man a woman can neither drive nor lead; so we've got to
put up with him." And she smiled upon us sweetly, and disappeared
for ever.

Charles was disconsolate all that day. Next morning he rose, and
announced his intention of setting out for the West on his tour of
inspection. He would recreate by revelling in Colorado silver lodes.

We packed our own portmanteaus, for Charles had not brought even
Simpson with him, and then we prepared to set out by the morning
train for Saratoga.

Up till almost the last moment Charles nursed his dispatch-box.
But as the "baggage-smashers" were taking down our luggage, and a
chambermaid was lounging officiously about in search of a tip,
he laid it down for a second or two on the centre table while he
collected his other immediate impedimenta. He couldn't find his
cigarette-case, and went back to the bedroom for it. I helped
him hunt, but it had disappeared mysteriously. That moment lost
him. When we had found the cigarette-case, and returned to the
sitting-room--lo, and behold! the dispatch-box was missing!
Charles questioned the servants, but none of them had noticed it.
He searched round the room--not a trace of it anywhere.

"Why, I laid it down here just two minutes ago!" he cried. But it
was not forthcoming.

"It'll turn up in time," I said. "Everything turns up in the
end--including Mrs. Quackenboss's nose."

"Seymour," said my brother-in-law, "your hilarity is inopportune."

To say the truth, Charles was beside himself with anger. He took
the elevator down to the "Bureau," as they call it, and complained
to the manager. The manager, a sharp-faced New Yorker, smiled as
he remarked in a nonchalant way that guests with valuables were
required to leave them in charge of the management, in which case
they were locked up in the safe and duly returned to the depositor
on leaving. Charles declared somewhat excitedly that he had been
robbed, and demanded that nobody should be allowed to leave the
hotel till the dispatch-box was discovered. The manager, quite cool,
and obtrusively picking his teeth, responded that such tactics might
be possible in an hotel of the European size, putting up