ion button, "patriotism is the last resort--of
plutocrats!"

He laughed good-naturedly and silently. Then he rose and said as he
started to go:

"Well, Tom,--we won't quarrel over a little thing like our beloved
country. Why, Lila--" the old man looked up and saw the girl, "bless my
eyes, child, how you do grow, and how pretty you look in your new
ginghams--just like your mother, twenty years ago!" Amos Adams was
talking to a shy young girl--blue-eyed and brown-haired, who was walking
out of the store after buying a bottle of ink of Miss Calvin. Lila spoke
to the old man and would have gone with him, but for the booming voice
of Mr. Brotherton, the gray-clad benedict, who looked not unlike the
huge, pot-bellied gray jars which adorned "the sweet serenity of books
and wall paper."

Mr. Brotherton had glanced up from his ledger at Amos Adams's mention of
Lila's name. Coming forward, he saw her in her new dress, a bright
gingham dress that reached so nearly to her shoe tops that Mr.
Brotherton cried: "Well, look who's here--if it isn't Miss Van Dorn! And
a great pleasure it is to see and know you, Miss Van Dorn."

He repeated the name two or three times gently, while Lila smiled in shy
appreciation of Mr. Brotherton's ambushed joke. Her father, standing by
a squash-necked lavender jug in the "serenity," did not entirely grasp
Mr. Brotherton's point. But while the father was groping for it, Mr.
Brotherton went on:

"Miss Van Dorn, once I had a dear friend--such a dear little friend
named Lila. Perhaps you may see her sometimes? Maybe sometimes at night
she comes to see you--maybe she peeps in when you are alone and asks to
play. Well, say--Lila," called Mr. Brotherton as gently as a fog horn
tooting a nocturne, "if she ever comes, if you ever see her, will you
give her my love? It would be highly improper for a married gentleman
with asthmatic tendencies and too much waistband to send his love or
anything like it to Miss Van Dorn; it would surely cause comment. But if
Lila ever comes, Miss Van Dorn," frolicked the elephant, "give her my
love and tell her that often here in the serenity, I shut my eyes and
see her playing out on Elm Street, a teenty, weenty girl--with blue hair
and curly eyes--or maybe it was the other way around," Mr. Brotherton
heaved a prodigious sigh and waved a weary, fat hand--"and here, my
lords and gentlemen, is Miss Van Dorn with her dresses down to her shoe
tops!"

The girl was smiling and