peditions into
another's territory, Jimmie's first letter arrived. It was mailed at
Honolulu, and consisted obediently of the cryptic statement: "There is
no girl on the boat. She is a widow, but lots of fun." And it changed
the character of the invasion from a harmless survey of the land to a
determined attack upon its fortresses. And so Gilbert Stevenson,
millionaire dock owner, veteran of many seasons and more campaigns,
found himself engaged to Miss Sylvia Knowles just when, after a long and
careful courtship, he had decided to bestow his hand and name upon the
daughter of the retired senior partner of his firm: "that dear little
girl of old Marvin's," as he described the lady of his choice, "his only
child and a good child, too." He bore his surprise and honors with a
courteous pomposity. Miss Knowles bore the situation with restraint and
decorum. But that "dear little girl of old Marvin's" could not bring
herself to bear it at all and wept away her modest claims to prettiness
and spirit in one desolate month.

Like many a humbler poacher, Sylvia Knowles found an embarrassment in
disposing of her victims after she had bagged them, and Mr. Gilbert
Stevenson was peculiarly difficult in this regard. She did not want to
keep him. In fact, the engagement upon which she was enduring
congratulations had been as surprising to her as to her fiance. And the
methodical manifestations of his regard contrasted wearyingly with the
erratic events in another friendship in which nothing was to be counted
upon except the unaccountable. So that when vanquished suitors withdrew
discomfited and returned to renew an earlier allegiance or to swear a
new one; when "that good child of old Marvin's" had withdrawn her
pitiful little face and her disappointment into the remote fastness of
settlement work; when her mother resigned all claims upon the victoria
and loudly affirmed her preference for the brougham, then things in
general--and Mr. Stevenson in particular--began to bore Miss Knowles,
and she began to look forward, with an emotion which would have
surprised her betrothed, to foreign mails and letters. She considerately
spared Mr. Stevenson this disquieting intelligence, having found him in
matters of honor and rectitude as archaic and as fastidious as Jimmie
himself. "Has a nasty suspicious mind," she reflected, "and a nasty
jealous disposition. I wonder if he will expect me to give up all my
friends when I marry him."

Yet even Mr