of nights and wake up in the morning to have your bright young
Goths take my money away from me."

He laughed and continued: "Little Bobby Smythe, who used to live here,
was in my office the other day. I was complimenting him on the
prosperity of the plumbers' supply manufacture--for such is his mundane
occupation, in Schenectady, N.Y. Bobby said that plumbers' supplies were
all well enough, but he made his real money from an interesting device
of his own. There is a lot of building going on in his neighborhood, it
seems, and it occurred to him to send around to the various owners and
offer his private watchman to guard the loose building materials at
night. This for the very reasonable price of $3.50 a week. It went like
hot cakes. 'But,' said I, 'surely your one watchman can't look after
thirty-seven different places.' 'No,' said Bobby, 'but they think he
does.' I laughed and commended his ingenuity. 'But the best part of the
joke,' said he, 'is that _I haven't got any watchman at all_.'"

Sharlee Weyland laughed gayly. "Bobby could stand for the portrait of
young America."

"You've been sitting at the feet of a staunch old Tory Gamaliel named
Colonel Cowles. I can see that. Ah, me! My garrulity has cost us a
splendid chance to cross. What are all these dreadful things you have
still left to do on your so-called holiday?"

"Well," said she, "first I'm going to Saltman's to buy stationery. Boxes
and boxes of it, for the Department. Bee! Come here, sir! Look how fat
this purse is. I'm going to spend all of that. Bee! I wish I had put him
to leash. He's going to hurt himself in a minute--you see!--"

"Don't you think he's much more likely to hurt somebody else? For a
guess, that queer-looking little citizen in spectacles over the way, who
so evidently doesn't know where he is at."

"Oh, do you think so?--Bee!... Then, after stationery, comes the
disagreeable thing, and yet interesting too. I have to go to my Aunt
Jennie's, dunning."

"You are compelled to dun your Aunt Jennie?"

She laughed. "No--dun for her, because she's too tender-hearted to do
it herself. There's a man there who won't pay his board. Bee!
Bee!--BEE!-O heavens--It's happened!"

And, too quick for West, she was gone into the melee, which immediately
closed in behind her, barricading him away.

What had happened was a small tragedy in its way. The little citizen in
spectacles, who had been standing on the opposite corner vacantly eating
an ap