is with my
wife. I'll tell her you're looking for her; if she wants to meet you,
I'll tell you, if you come back here."

"All right, mucher bliged," said Jake. Baffled and without further
recourse, he left the Major's presence, since there seemed to be
nothing else to do. But once outside, he felt that there had been
something highly unsatisfactory about the parley. He decided to
imitate Mary's little lamb and to hang about the building till the
Major should appear. In an hour or two he was rewarded by seeing
Widdicombe leave the door and step into an automobile. Jake heard him
tell the driver, "The Shoreham."

Jake walked to the hotel and saw Marie Louise seated at a table by a
window. He recognized her by her picture and was duly triumphant. He
was ready to advance and demand recognition. Then he realized that he
could make no claim on her without his awful wife's corroboration. He
took a street-car back to the station and found his nominal helpmeet
sitting just where he had left her.

Abbie had bought no newspaper, book, or magazine to while away the
time with. She was not impatient of idleness. It was luxury enough
just not to be warshin' clo'es, cookin' vittles, or wrastlin' dishes.
She took a dreamy content in studying the majesty of the architecture,
but her interest in it was about that of a lizard basking on a fallen
column in a Greek peristyle. It was warm and spacious and nobody
disturbed her drowsy beatitude.

When Jake came and summoned her she rose like a rheumatic old
househound and obeyed her master's voice.

Jake gave her such a vote of confidence as was implied in letting her
lug the luggage. It was cheaper for her to carry it than for him to
store it in the parcel-room. It caused the fellow-passengers in the
street-car acute inconvenience, but Jake was superior to public
opinion of his wife. In such a homely guise did the fates approach
Miss Webling.

CHAPTER X

The best place for a view is in one's back yard; then it is one's own.
If it is in the front yard, then the house is only part of the
public's view.

In London Marie Louise had lived at Sir Joseph Webling's home, its
gray, fog-stained, smoked-begrimed front flush with the pavement. But
back of the house was a high-walled garden with a fountain that never
played. There was a great rug of English-green grass, very green all
winter and still greener all summer. At an appropriate spot was a
tree; a tea-table sat under it; in b