, many a stay-at-home page won a lonesome lady's hand by being
on the spot to pick up her glove and be quick with her cloak when the
wind blew. The man I am to like best, whoever he shall be, must show
his love in little ways. He must never forget, after hearing it once,
that I do not like to have any one walk at my left side; that I detest
bright-colored neckties; that I prefer to sit with my back to a light;
that I like candied violets; that I must not be talked to when I am
looking at the moonlight shining on water, and that I very, very often
long for dates stuffed with English walnuts."

"Frivolity," I said, with a frown. "Any well-trained servant would be
equal to such details."

"And he must remember," went on Chloe, to remind me of what I want
when I do not know, myself, what I want."

"You're rising in the scale," I said. "What you seem to need is a
first-class clairvoyant."

"And if I say that I am dying to hear a Beethoven sonata, and stamp my
foot when I say it, he must know by that that what my soul craves is
salted almonds; and he will have them ready in his pocket."

"Now," said I, "I am at a loss. I do not know whether your soul's
affinity is to be an impresario or a fancy grocer."

Chloe turned her pearly smile upon me.

"Take less than half of what I said as a jest," she went on. "And
don't think too lightly of the little things, Boy. Be a paladin if
you must, but don't let it show on you. Most women are only very big
children, and most men are only very little ones. Please us; don't
try to overpower us. When we want a hero we can make one out of even
a plain grocer the third time he catches our handkerchief before it
falls to the ground."

That evening I was taken down with pernicious fever. That is a kind
of coast fever with improvements and high-geared attachments. Your
temperature goes up among the threes and fours and remains there,
laughing scornfully and feverishly at the cinchona trees and the
coal-tar derivatives. Pernicious fever is a case for a simple
mathematician instead of a doctor. It is merely this formula:
Vitality + the desire to live - the duration of the fever = the
result.

I took to my bed in the two-roomed thatched hut where I had been
comfortably established, and sent for a gallon of rum. That was not
for myself. Drunk, Stamford was the best doctor between the Andes
and the Pacific. He came, sat at my bedside, and drank himself into
condition.

"My boy," said he, "