wore a shiny satin dress of electric blue, skin tight, and modishly sleeveless and backless. Mannie Blair, the tall, slender, blasé leader of Deep Ellum society, also trained his prominent eyes on Miss Perfumia. "Dey ain' nuttin' stingy about her," he admitted, a look of interest overspreading his light-brown, intelligent face.

"An' she sho kin dance," said Spider, mopping his perspiring brow. Guiding the vast Miss Perfumia through the mazes of the dance had been strenuous exercise for the cobwebby youth.

"Fat ladies is allers light on they feet," suggested Hosea Hupp, who shared honors with Mannie in Darktown esteem. He was Mannie's direct antithesis, with his heavy black features, thick lips, retreating forehead, and happy-go-lucky nature.

"Interjuce me," commanded Mannie, shortly and to the point. Wonder of wonders! Why, frequently the leader of Deep Ellum society would not even take the trouble to look at a new girl. Hosea noticed this particularly.

"My name is Miss Petunia," confidentially corrected the young female leviathan after Spider had performed the introduction and had departed.

"Yassum, but I claims Miz Blair would suit you bettah," said Mannie, with a bow.

Miss Perfumia playfully tapped him with her fan. "Oh, you mens is all alike," she giggled. "Full o' sweet sayin's, but none o' you doan mean nuttin' what you says. Dat is de cha'm of Southren gen'men."

This was borrowed. Miss Perfumia's mistress was from the North, and she was now entertaining a Northern girlhood friend whom Miss Perfumia had overheard, the evening before, in the illuminating remark anent Southern gentlemen.

Mannie was hard hit. These lofty ones fall like plummets. "Lady, you is got me down wrong!" he protested as they melted into the dance.

"Is I?" giggled Miss Perfumia.

"You is. Besides, iffen I is a Southren gen'man, I votes de Republicum ticket."

"Den dat meks it all right," laughed Miss Perfumia.

Mannie grinned from ear to ear at the swift exoneration and began: "Sweet honey, kin I-"

OUT at that moment Hosea cut in. His eyes had

BUT at that he couple. He had sensed the vibrant

interest of all the males in the hall. He foresaw that if he waited until the end of the dance, he would never have a chance in the mad stampede that would ensue toward Miss Perfumia. There was nothing for Mannie to do but withdraw, but he scowled banefully at his partner.

"Some swell danceh, dat podneh o'mine," Hosea began, by way of a conversational wedge, as they commenced.

"Not nothin' nowheres cumpared to you," flattered Miss Perfumia.

"Aw, I cain' dance," grinned Hosea, serene in the knowledge of his perfect art. "Is you a visitin' lady?" he asked.

"No, resumdent," answered Miss Perfumia.

"Golly, dat's nice. Got a date

fo' Sunday night?"

"Bettah save Sunday night fo' yo' reg'lar girl," coquetted Miss Perfumia.

Hosea laughed, showing all of his thirty-two perfect teeth. "Dat's what I's a-doin', iffen you'll be her."

Miss Perfumia repeated her formula: "Oh, you Southren gen'men! Doan none o' you mean a wu'd what you says."

"Don't us?" repeated Hosea earnestly. "Umphm-m! Listen to me:

Doubt dat de stahs is fiah;

Doubt dat de sun do move;
Doubt dat troof am a liah;

But neveh doubt I love!"

"Dat's gran'! I wish it wuz so," sighed Miss Perfumia.

"It is so!. I'll swear it on a stack o' Bibles higher'n dis house. Miss Perfumia-honey-"

"Miss Petunia is my name," she corrected. "You know-de sweet-smellin' flower."

"Yassum, you sho is. Kin I-"

"You'll ha'ter 'scuse me now," interrupted Miss

Perfumia. "De nex' dance is begaged to Mistuh Spider."

The elusiveness of Miss Perfumia! She sailed away on the arm of the diminutive Spider like an ocean liner in the convoy of a fluttering tug. With the utmost ease she had escaped entangling alliances with the two most consummate Lotharios in Deep Ellum. "Dawg-gone!" said Hosea, following the incongruous couple with his eyes. He heard a portentous sigh behind him. Turning, he found Mannie watching with an eagerness that matched his own.

Presently, Miss Perfumia floated by in the dance. Sloofoot Jackson, just ahead, slinging his huge feet a trifle more awkwardly than usual, suddenly cast a

shoe. It lay directly in the path

of the tugging Spider. A moment more and he would have been swamped by the monstrosity. Miss Perfumia, however, noting the obstruction, gracefully lifted her partner over the barrier with one arm, while with the other she waved a greeting to Mannie and Hosea. Not a beat of the music had escaped her, not a step had been lost. The capability of Miss Perfumia! Hosea closed his mouth and moistened his lips. Mannie caught his lost breath sharply. Then they looked at each other furtively, simpered with self-consciousness, and sidled away. There was rivalry between the chieftains.

RESTES observed the flutter

flame of Miss Perfumia and fain would have singed his own wings but for the baneful glint in Nannette's eyes. Nannette knew a vamp when she saw one. Not for nothing was she a devotee of the movies. She disapproved of Miss Perfumia utterly. Homeward bound, in the truck, she voiced her distrust. "Uv all de dange'ous women, a fat woman is de dange'ouses'!" she began.

"How come?"

"You know yo'se'f 'how de Bible say doan nobody love a fat man, an', by de same sign, eve'ybody is crazy 'bout a fat woman. so ample."

"Umphm-m," agreed Orestes.

Dey is

"Look at. Mannie an' Hosea! Dem stuck-ups is clean swep' off dey foots 'count o' dat Miss Perfumia." "I seed 'em," grinned Orestes. "Dey look lak two li'l birds up in a tree in love wid a buzzard." Nannette snuggled closer. "Rest Ease, you is so poetic!"

Orestes chuckled with complacency and said nothing.

"An' dat Miss Perfumia," Nannette went on, "won't do! She is shamin' hu' color!"

"How come?" demanded Orestes, shocked at the extreme of African infamy imputed to Miss Perfumia. "Livin' in de same house wid white folkses! Hit ain' right!".

"Do she do dat?" gasped Orestes.

"She do!" condemned Nannette. "She tolt me hu'se'f, an' giggled lak hit wuz sump'n' smaht. She say hu' mistress wuz from de No'ff an' ain' particler."

"An' I say, iffen de mistress ain' particler, I is. I doan wants to live in no house wid no white folkses, an' hab 'em sniffin' roun' me. Umphm-m! White folks' noses is too keen! I'll wuk fo' 'em, but I' draws de line at livin' wid 'em!"

"Dat's right."

If racial equality was repugnant to Nannette, it was not so to the colored swains of Deep Ellum. It but added another button to Miss Perfumia's voluminous charm string. Here was a colored lady who did not live in the back yard over the garage, in accordance with the Southerner's solution of the racial housing problem, but under the same roof (directly under the roof) of her employer. Deep Ellum listened open-mouthed to Miss Perfumia's exquisite announcement: "No, I doan lives oveh no ca-rage; I lives oveh de resumdence proppeh." Nevertheless, she was the most amiable of servants, always satisfied with and making the most of conditions. "Petunia," said the visiting young lady. "Here is a sash of mine you may have." "Thank you, my sweet mistress. Dat'll des fit me as a belt."

Added to her many charms, Miss Perfumia was romantic. Her She lived in a roseate world. prosaic daily routine was shot through with prismatic refractions from her scintillant imagination. She never went to market but as a crusading St. Ursula. The veriest clod of a huckster was a potential knight. Even her name was the result of fanciful embroidering.

"Sally, whaffo' you live in de house wid dem white folks, lak a ekal?" reproachfully demanded her plain and unemotional sister, when she came in from the country on a visit, and the two sat in the drug store sipping soda. (Continued on page 20)

I

'D got through for the season on the oyster beds, and I was early this morning heading for Bay City in the oyster company's tugboat when we most run over a disabled motor boat with a man named Gray and a pleasant-looking woman, Mrs. Creamer, and a nice-looking girl, her daughter, in it. Gray'd hired the boat the evening before for a moonlight run around the bay. They got plenty of moonlight, he said, but not much of a run around. One hour out and her engine lay down and died.

I towed them and their motor boat to Bay City, which is a great place for oysters, and north- and south-bound tourists stopping over, and they're grateful to me, and ask me won't I come up to the hotel and have breakfast, and, sort of liking their looks, I do.

After breakfast the women go to their rooms to overhaul themselves, and I sit in for a smoke and a talk with Gray, who's a tall, slim, young-looking fellow with a lot of gray in his hair, and a goodlooking enough face to go on a medal.

"You could easy do a double," I says before we're talking long, "for an actor I've seen in the movies named De Launey."

"De Launey? That so? Can he act?"

"I dunno. In the movies I see him he's mostly a noble young duke, or a swell gambler, and don't have to act. Mostly he has only to wear his dress suit like it isn't boiler plate, and walk in and out with an air of class."

And he laughs and tells me he is the De Launey of the movies, and that Mrs. Creamer and her daughter and himself have just finished making a picture in the Carolina hills. And an actor who can smile without straining himself after you tell him he isn't any wonder-why, I'd take a chance on him for a

watch mate.

We go on talking, and by and by he confides to me that he's in love with Miss Creamer. "And I've been in love with her for five years," he adds on. "Well," I says, "I wouldn't have to be eating

By James B. Connolly

Illustrated by Perc E. Cowen

breakfast all my life with the pair of you to see she don't hate you, nor the mother, so why do you say that so discouraged like?"

pretty good to all of us. And" he stops-"there's a special reason why I want to go by this steamer sailing to-night. I wish you were coming with us." "I'd like it," I says, "only salt water's no treat to me, and not seeing the wife and babies since Christmas, why, the train looks a lot quicker."

I at hithear some one a my

LEAVE Gray at the hotel, and I'm jogging along

"She won't marry me. I'm a divorced man, and her church won't allow her to marry me while my former wife is living."

"Rough on you, but hooray for her!" I says. "What with all this movie gossip I been readin' lately, I didn't know there was any movie queen letting a little thing like another wife stop 'em from marrying a man."

He asks me, then, am I married, and I tell him I certainly am.

"Children?"

"A fleet of seven cruising around and another just in commission."

"The old-fashioned kind, your wife?"

"Oh, not too old-fashioned," I says. "Gets in her hour's beauty nap every afternoon, and now and again between babies she has time to take in a dance with me, and let me tell you that when she does, and it comes Home Sweet Home Waltz time, she's got most of those fluffy young birds looking like bon voyage flowers after the steamer is three days to sea.

He sighs like, saying: "You're a lucky man, captain."

"I know it," I says. "And I'm on my way to-day to New York and home."

"New York? Why, the three of us are taking the New York steamer from here to-night," he says. "Last night didn't give the ladies enough o' salt water?" I says.

"Oh, they're not easily frightened. And after three months in that up-country hills the sea looks

name.

I turn around, and there is Herbie Grint, that I hadn't seen since the days when he was a third and me a first mate, and we running out of Caribbean ports in a banana line of boats together.

We have a word or two of the old days. I ask Herbie what he's doing. "Oh, still steamboating. But master of my own ship now," he says, proud like. "And married! Ever hear I was married?" he asks sort of anxious like, as if it's important.

I hadn't heard; but I was glad to hear it, for out of my own life I could tell him that a good woman at home is the full equal of a second anchor to any man, and may be a bit more to a man that was never modeled for heavy work to windward, which Herbie wasn't.

"What d'y say, captain, to coming along home with me for a bite of lunch and meeting the missis?" he asks.

"I'd like it fine," I says, and he steps into where there's a telephone to tell his wife he's bringing somebody along to lunch and who it is. The telephone is out front in a little hotel, but in back is a little bar that the dry laws don't seem to have worried any, and Herbie leads the way to it, saying: "How about a little drink, Alec?"

And I say all right and have a bottle of beer, and he has a brandy. And I come back and he has another brandy. And he says: "Another little taste, Alec?" And I say all right and have another beer, and he has a brandy, and when I come back he has another brandy.

He wants me to have another beer, but I had

enough. After a winter in the bay I could've stood a barrel of what they called beer at that bar; but he's had four brandies, one in the wake of the other, and he didn't use to be a drinking man! And the rest of the way to Herbie's house I'm trying to puzzle out what changed him.

A grand-looking house it was for just a steamboat man to be master of when we came to it. And when we go in there's Herbie's wife coming down wide stairs to meet us. A good looker, she was, and dressed in what she explained was her neglijay.

Damn neglijay, I thought, but she's friendly as a man could ask, and stepping over to a brandy bottle standing loose on the sideboard, she pours out a couple of stiff drinks, saying: "A old seafaring man like you, captain, takes a drink sometime?"

It's brandy she's pouring out, and brandy was never any steady drink of mine, not even in my wild days, and I pass it up with the alibi that I had to meet the manager of the company and talk business after lunch.

But Herbie takes his and downs it; and a few minutes later he downs the one poured out for me. That made six good hookers of brandy for him in about an hour, and about two drinks a week used to do him when I knew him before, so I have a closer look at him, and from the tough and husky young fellow he used to be--he's now still young enough too-what I see now is a body soft like a hand of bananas that've been hanging about four days too long in the hold. And his eyes aren't too clear.

When we're pretty near through eating, and I tell Herbie I'm on my way to New York, he says: "If you're not all set to go by train, why don't you go by the Bay Shore, my packet, to-night? Mrs. Grint's been running up and back with me lately." And turning to her: "Coming this trip too, didn't you say, Venie?" "You know how lonesome it is home without you, Herbie darling-of course I am going. But Captain Corning would not care to go by your ship." And to me she adds on: "You know, captain, the Bay Shore is more of a freighter, and not as comfortable as it might be for passengers."

Now, the Bay Shore did carry freight, but she wasn't any tramp. And even if she was-to talk of discomfort to a man who's been roughing it all his life was like pulling the wrong bell from the bridge. And being herself a woman who was modeled in every line for smooth seas-"What you doing aboard her if the going on her is so rough?" I think. And I look at her to see can I get what she's heading up for, and she looks at me, and I look at Herbie and then back to her, and by then her face, that's been lumpy with a smile at me, smooths out and hardens, and something that makes me think of a cold gray fog settles down over her eyes.

LEAVE then and go to Dirk Harmer's office. Dirk was master of an oyster schooner between Bay Shore and Boston when I was only a boy around the Boston water front. A great roisterer in his day, but straight and honest, and a good friend to me. "I was expectin' you to lunch-where you been all the mornin'?" says Dirk.

And I tell him, and he says: "Rescuin' fair ladies,

huh? An' lunchin' with Mrs. Grint! And how is Captain Grint's health?"

I ask him what's he hinting about Grint's health, and he asks me ain't I never heard about Mrs. Grint's other husband? Not knowing till then she's had one before Herbie, I say that and ask what happened to him.

"He died," says Dirk. "A feeble old party. But before he died he leaves a will which jounces all his relations out of his money. She gets the money. And the bereaved relations said he was poisoned." "And was he?"

"The jury said no. And they must've thought it over pretty well, because they were out fourteen hours."

"How'd Herbie come to marry her?"

"How? Three an' four months at a lick with those oyster crews down the bay-it's too long for you, Alec. You lose the run o' that high civilization we have ashore. Grint never married hershe married him. You've had a good look at hercan't y' imagine her rovin' eyes brightenin' up when she first spots him-a solid, plump lad, squirmin'

She's clear of the harbor and on her way, and I'm thinking of having a bite to eat when I bump into Gray on the main deck, so we go below together to eat, me asking where the ladies are, and he telling me how they're going to have their dinner in their room, and then Mrs. Creamer is going to bed early to catch up on sleep.

"Frances-Miss Creamer-may come out for a while later," he says, "for a promenade on deck if the moon is out."

"No moon to-night-going to be foggy," I say. And when I do he stops eating, which makes me wish I hadn't said it; for a moonlight night and a lovely girl on a promenade deck out to sea-well, it must be a jolt to any young fellow to think of missing it; and then I see it's not what I said about the moon which stopped him. His table seat is tucked in the lee of one of those decorated fat stanchions that they stick around in mess rooms on passenger steamers, and he has his neck stuck out around the stanchion, and saying: "Who's that man--the one with that woman?"

LOOK around, and there's two men with two

'Course she throws her tongs out an' grapples him in. But soon he'll go driftin' out with never a handy pair of tongs to haul him back, meanin' she's done with him. There's a pile o' people blamin' your friend Grint for the way he's hittin' the booze, but I blame her mostly, because for a not too bright party like Grint to know where he stands with a woman like her-why, it's like tryin' to get a ship's position by a cloudy sky. It means dead reckoning." "What's the matter with dead reckoning?" I says. "Why," says Dirk, "if we know our vessel an' our log an' our compass 'n' chronometer and all about the tides wherever it is we're cruising, there's nothin' the matter. We can haul out the chart an' figure it all out, an' by 'n' by, without ever a look at the sun, lay down a pencil point and say: 'She's about there!' And if we had to stand inshore and make port on the strength of that reckoning on a thick night, why, we'd most likely make it all right." "That's what I say too."

"Sure. But if she's a strange vessel, an' strange waters, and a chronometer and a log we ain't never had rated, and a compass we ain't never had corrected-why, we'd probably heave her to an' wait for a shot at the sun, wouldn't we? But, pickled the way Grint is about half the time, why, he wouldn't know is the sun out or not, would he? Which way you goin' home-train or steamer?" says Dirk.

"This morning I thought I was going by train, but now I dunno." And I tell him about the steamer talk with Herbie and his wife, saying: "Which way would you go?"

"Pick your own sailing courses. But I never liked them long train trips myself-they're too dusty," says Dirk.

"They are dusty, that's so," I says, and I leave Dirk and finish up the afternoon at a movie show and buy my steamer passage and go aboard the Bay Shore, it being by then pretty dark and she all ready to put out.

mouth we could hear him a deck length away. And the poor girl with him-there was no mistaking. Flying her colors alow and aloft she was.

"Not that one," says Gray when he sees where I'm looking. "The one with the man in uniform, I mean." It was Mrs. Grint. I tell him that, and he asks me if that is Captain Grint she's eating with, and I tell him no, it isn't.

"No? Then who is he?" he asks; and I tell him I don't know, but by the stripes on his sleeves he ought to be the third mate of the ship.

"And where's Captain Grint?"

"In the wheelhouse-or he ought to be-till we're well down the bay," I says.

Gray keeps squinting around his stanchion at Mrs. Grint and the third officer till they finish their meal and pass out of the saloon by the door at the other end. We finish our meal and Gray goes to see that Miss Creamer and her mother are all right, and then comes out and joins me in a smoke.

We walk the deck, and he takes up the talk where he knocked it off in his hotel that morning; and by and by he says: "Ever meet with one of those women who will go to hell to get the man they want, and then go to hell to get rid of him?" And I tell him I don't believe any of that class ever crossed my bows, 'less it was in a black fog or a snow squall, or something else so thick her side lights didn't show in passing.

"A lucky man," he says, and he goes on to tell how about ten years ago he'd got married and his wife was acting in the same company with him, and things were going along fine, or he thought they were, till he had to leave New York for the road. She said she wouldn't leave New York, and she didn't. But being under contract, he had to leave. He was hardly home again when she had a divorce-for desertion. "You didn't fight it?" I asks him.

"Who fights a woman who wants a divorce these days? Last winter I (Continued on page 24)

"My suggestion is made through the business man's own organization, the United States Chamber of Commerce"

the fifty men who sat around the table that evening only two enjoyed any vacation at all last

summer!

One of them spent only one week-end in the country with his family. He, and the others, worked straight through the heated months, striving to carry their own affairs and do justice at the same time to the multitude of outside demands that were constantly being thrust upon them. tired but still feeling that they must not refuse, they And now, rather had gathered to undertake a new campaign.

No one could have listened to the conversation without gaining a new conception of the penalty which prominence inflicts. They were all alumni of the same institution, and old friends; they could

talk without reserve. One of the num ber, who has been a friend of our work for many years, related the conversation to me afterward, and since it violates no confidence, and is typical of similar conferences going on almost every night in every city, I will reproduce it in part.

"You'll have to be chairman, Joe," said one of them, turning toward the corporation president. "You've been through all the Red Cross drives and know just how to do it."

The corporation president threw up his hands.

"Let me tell you fellows just how I am situated," he said. "Then if you have the heart to force this thing on me I'll consider it. But I know you won't have the heart! In the first place, I needn't discuss the Red Cross and Liberty Loan campaigns; you know about them. They kept me out of the office almost constantly through the war. Then came the United War Work drive, opening on the day the armistice was signed. I was chairman of that in our town. My wife is chairman of the committee that has been raising a million and a half for her college; the school where my girl graduated is raising half a million and she is a member of the committee, which means more work for father, of course. I'm chairman of the trustees of the city hospital; I'm on the committee of the Near East Relief, the Salvation Army, and the National Tuberculosis Association; and this morning I get word from my pastor that the trustees of the church have approved plans for a new parish

HEY turned to the financier next, and then to the lawyer, and then to a "capitalist" whose income is supposed to be so large that he can have no worries at all. In every single instance the story was precisely the same. For months the business of these men had been almost a secondary consideration: campaign after campaign and drive after drive have looked to them for leadership and help until they have almost reached the breaking point. Even an appeal so personal-so compelling-as the need of their own college found them hardly able to respond. They did respond, of course, patching together a committee, and agreeing to divide the burden as best they could. But when the organization was completed and they were ready to leave the club, the corporation president rose and solemnly held up his hand.

"In the presence of all you fellows as witnesses," he said, "I wish to announce that this is positively my last campaign. When we get this money in the bank I am going to enjoy the novel experience of visiting with my family a few evenings, and learning the names of some (Continued on page 29)

M

ISS STARR looked at her wrist watch.

Then she sighed. Ten minutes past nine. John Warren was late. In his office the stage was set for his coming; his entrance was prepared. Everything was in order. Miss Starr wandered about; made sure of that again. She looked out, through the highly polished windows, down to Fifth Avenue, filled with busses, motors, hurrying pedestrians. Her feet sank into the soft rug as she moved about; her eyes rested on spotless mahogany. On Warren's great desk there lay a pile of letters, opened and spread out for his swift inspection.

Miss Starr was a rather pretty girl who didn't want anyone to notice that during office hours. You felt that she preferred to be just a good secretary then. To be sure, she smiled when she heard the turmoil of Warren's coming, outside, but she was still alone when she did that.

Warren came in stormily. But he was like a pleasant, cheerful storm. He was like a fresh, keen gale from the northwest; the sort that blows in a morning of sunshine and blue skies after a rainy night. He wasn't at all like one of those grim easterly storms that drive rain and sleet into your face from drab, leaden skies.

"Good morning!" He grinned cheerfully. "Terrible day ahead of us. Tell 'em outside to tell anyone who calls up I'm in a conference-anyone. It gets worse all the time. People calling me up before I can get away from home. Jackson-coming in to give me a lift down here-hang him! The pace in this town is killing, Miss Starr-simply killing."

"You have a conference with Mr. Wainwright at ten, Mr. Warren," she said. "And the mail's heavy this morning-"

"All right-all right. Let's get going."

tic notes as she put it away. Three times, perhaps, he dictated complete answers to especially important letters; as a rule, though, he left the phrasing to her.

Then he slowed and grew restless. He rose, holding a letter in his hand, and wandered about the room. By the window he paused. "Something I wanted you to do for me," he said, frowning. "The strain's telling on me. I'm losing my memory. No wonder, with this rush-oh, I know-"

He explored a card case; produced, triumphantly, a card, and handed it to her.

"Flowers-new books-candy-all that sort of thing," he said, vaguely, and not without embarrassment. "Too busy to attend to all that myself. But you understand. Sort of thing you like yourself. Leave it all to you. Been too busy to learn the ropes, anyway."

Miss Starr found it necessary to stoop to retrieve a handkerchief. When she rose her face was rather red-from the sudden exertion, probably. Good secretaries, of course, never permit themselves to be amused by their employers.

"Very well, Mr. Warren," she said. "Oh--I arranged for those seats you wanted at the opera. One of the agencies had a pair for Mondays and Wednesdays in a good position."

"Splendid!" He glanced at the letter he was holding. "Here you are. Tell them we won't decide about that plant extension until January. No use doing anything with materials skyrocketing the way they are now. Things are bound to steady down."

He went on, then, until he came to a letter that checked the rush, He leaned forward; his eyes

They've outgrown it, I suppose. Lord-I can remember old Miss Thatcher, the librarian--Miss Sally! She was always mighty careful about the books she let us kids take out. And I can remember how tickled she was when I started taking out books about engineering instead of Henty and Mayne Reid and Oliver Optic. So Charley Ledbetter's running the campaign! He and I went to school together, but he never left Maytown-lucky stiff! He's got a fine big feed business. Write him a nice letter, Miss Starr, and make out a check for a thousand dollars."

He passed the letter to her. She took it. But"Mr. Warren!" she said.

"Yes?" he answered, rather surprised. Not once in a week did Miss Starr ever question any of his directions; he had learned that when she did it was wise to heed her.

"Do you want to send that check this month? I'm making out a good many checks to-day. There are dues at three or four clubs, and those opera seats, and your new car. And you'll be paying for that stock in three or four days--the last installment is due then-"

"That's so!" he said, and frowned. "Another thousand would make a dent this month, wouldn't it? H'm! I tell you-I'm going to take a vacation and go out to Maytown next month! You hear me, Miss Starr! Write Ledbetter-make it a personal letter, for me to sign. Tell him I'm delighted to hear of his plans, and that I'll hand him my contribution in person when I'm out there next month. Better to have a personal touch in a thing like that, anyhow!"

HE morning wore on. Miss Starr kept Warren

ter from Maytown, Miss Starr?"

She nodded. She didn't bother to remind him that she was there precisely because she noticed everything.

"Well--well!" he said. "So they've got to have a new library! That's a great town, Miss Starr! They're progressive there! But-good Lord, I can see the old one now! It was an old house on Court Street, Miss Starr-one of those old, square houses with a big cupola, in a big, old-fashioned yard.

stood between him and those who wanted to steal his time; saved him from a dozen breaks. She wasn't sorry when he went out to lunch; there were times when Warren, much as she liked working for him, made her long to lie down in a darkened, sound-proof room; times when she wished she had chosen a quieter occupation, and one less wearing to the nerves-something like housework, or operating a machine in a sweatshop.