ted to
make him look respectable, so they asked me to lend them my dress-suit,
but I told them I meant to wear it myself. That's how I came to wear a
dress-suit at a funeral. It was either me or MacGolderick."

"MacWilliams," said Clay, as he stuck the toe of one boot into the heel
of the other, "if I had your imagination I'd give up railroading and
take to writing war clouds for the newspapers."

"Do you mean you don't believe that story?" MacWilliams demanded,
sternly.

"I do," said Clay, "I mean I don't."

"Well, let it go," returned MacWilliams, gloomily; "but there's been
funerals for less than that, let me tell you."

A half-hour later MacWilliams appeared in the door and stood gazing
attentively at Clay arranging his tie before a hand-glass, and then at
himself in his unusual apparel.

"No wonder you voted to dress up," he exclaimed finally, in a tone of
personal injury. "That's not a dress-suit you've got on anyway. It
hasn't any tails. And I hope for your sake, Mr. Clay," he continued,
his voice rising in plaintive indignation, "that you are not going to
play that scarf on us for a vest. And you haven't got a high collar on,
either. That's only a rough blue print of a dress-suit. Why, you look
just as comfortable as though you were going to enjoy yourself--and you
look cool, too."

"Well, why not?" laughed Clay.

"Well, but look at me," cried the other. "Do I look cool? Do I look
happy or comfortable? No, I don't. I look just about the way I feel,
like a fool undertaker. I'm going to take this thing right off. You
and Ted Langham can wear your silk scarfs and bobtail coats, if you
like, but if they don't want me in white duck they don't get me."

When they reached the Palms, Clay asked Miss Langham if she did not
want to see his view. "And perhaps, if you appreciate it properly, I
will make you a present of it," he said, as he walked before her down
the length of the veranda.

"It would be very selfish to keep it all to my self," she said.

"Couldn't we share it?" They had left the others seated facing the
bay, with MacWilliams and young Langham on the broad steps of the
veranda, and the younger sister and her father sitting in long bamboo
steamer-chairs above them.

Clay and Miss Langham were quite alone. From the high cliff on which
the Palms stood they could look down the narrow inlet that joined the
ocean and see the moonlight turning the water into a rippling ladder of
light