E-TWEED-SUIT

Little-Tweed-Suit was being bothered by a toad--a toad-person with a
prominent thick watch chain and a loose smirk. She had been bothered
by him ever since dinner--dinner at night at the Cactus House, which
was inclined to be Eastern and effete in its apings--but his
persecutions there had been confined to lurking, contrived meetings,
and long glances which touched her noisomely.

Once she had swept the hotel office with a desperate glance, trying to
select a face to which she might appeal. There wasn't one. Estabrook
was filling with its usual week-end scum; crafty faces, hard faces,
faces shallowly good-natured, and therefore doubly treacherous. Even
the pimply clerk at the desk, discerning her unescorted state, had
changed subtly in voice and manner.

"Alone?"

"Yes, alone."

"Lonesome?"

She had not answered him. But here on the railway platform, where she
had fled to catch the East-bound, nine o'clock express, and where the
toad unhurriedly had followed her; here where she had thought to fear
him less she found she feared him more.

To know herself that such a thing had looked upon her as he had looked
was loathsome; to have others see him accost her and leer over their
interpretations of the insult seemed more than she could bear. And the
platform and hot, foul waiting-room, common to both men and women, were
both as conspicuous as the hotel had been; both peopled with the same
side-long glances.

So she had fled again from the lighted portion of the platform this
time to the darker, far more dangerous end, which was out of the puddle
of illumination. And now he was coming toward her less unhurriedly,
his canine teeth showing wolfishly through a grin. This last move of
hers he believed he understood; he even valued it. A little coquetry
lent zest to the game. And she _had_ led him a pretty chase--but
now . . . he was very sure of himself . . .

How Little-Tweed-Suit--a girl like Tweed-Suit--came there upon the
station platform of Estabrook is a long story; and it is not entirely
hers or ours. Therefore only the briefest part, for this tale's sake,
shall be set down here.

It concerns a white house on a hill, and a man who failed so bleakly
that few could remember, even directly after his funeral, how shining
his successes had been. For his brilliance could not be saved in ink
or perpetuated with paint or brush. To be sure, his friends after his
death now and then found them