ast to depart. Never had
Mr. Leary spent a more pleasant evening. He had been in rare form, a
variety of causes contributing to this happy state. To begin with, he
had danced nearly every dance with the lovely Miss Milly Hollister, for
whom he entertained the feelings which a gentleman of ripened judgment,
and one who was rising rapidly in his profession, might properly
entertain for an entirely charming young woman of reputed means and
undoubted social position.

A preposterous ass named Perkins--at least, Mr. Leary mentally indexed
Perkins as a preposterous ass--had brought Miss Hollister to the party,
but thereafter in the scheme of things Perkins did not count. He was a
cipher. You could back him up against a wall and take a rubber-tipped
pencil and rub him right out, as it were; and with regards to Miss
Hollister that, figuratively, was what Mr. Leary had done to Mr.
Perkins. Now on the other hand Voris might have amounted to something as
a potential rival, but Voris being newly appointed as a police
magistrate was prevented by press of official duties from coming to the
party; so Mr. Leary had had a clear field, as the saying goes, and had
made the most of it, as the other saying goes.

Moreover, Mr. Leary had been the recipient of unlimited praise upon the
ingenuity and the uniqueness expressed in his costume. He had not
represented a Little Lord Fauntleroy or a Buster Brown or a Boy Scout or
a Juvenile Cadet or a Midshipmite or an Oliver Twist. There had been
three Boy Scouts present and four Buster Browns and of sailor-suited
persons there had been no end, really. But Mr. Leary had chosen to
appear as Himself at the Age of Three; and, as the complimentary comment
proved, his get-up had reflected credit not alone upon its wearer but
upon its designer, Miss Rowena Skiff, who drew fashion pictures for one
of the women's magazines. Out of the goodness of her heart and the
depths of her professional knowledge Miss Skiff had gone to Mr. Leary's
aid, supervising the preparation of his wardrobe at a theatrical
costumer's shop up-town and, on the evening before, coming to his
bachelor apartments, accompanied by her mother, personally to add those
small special refinements which meant so much, as he now realised, in
attaining the desired result.

"Oh, Mr. Leary, I must tell you again how very fetching you do look!
Your costume is adorable, really it is; so--so cute and everything. And
I don't know what I should have d