again and presently could be heard moving about energetically in
various parts of the house, a remote thump finally indicating that he
was doing something with a trunk in the attic.

After that he came down to the library again and once more seemed about
to speak, but did not. Then he went up-stairs again, and came down
again, and he was still repeating this process when Jane's time-limit
was reached and she repaired conscientiously to her little bed. Her
mother came to hear her prayers and to turn out the light; and--when
Mrs. Baxter had passed out into the hall, after that, Jane heard
her speaking to William, who was now conducting what seemed to be
excavations on a serious scale in his own room.

"Oh, Willie, perhaps I didn't tell you, but--you remember I'd been
missing papa's evening clothes and looking everywhere for days and
days?"

"Ye--es," huskily from William.

"Well, I found them! And where do you suppose I'd put them? I found
them under your window-seat. Can you think of anything more absurd than
putting them there and then forgetting it? I took them to the tailor's
to have them let out. They were getting too tight for papa, but they'll
be all right for him when the tailor sends them back."

What the stricken William gathered from this it is impossible to state
with accuracy; probably he mixed some perplexity with his emotions.
Certainly he was perplexed the following evening at dinner.

Jane did not appear at the table. "Poor child! she's sick in bed," Mrs.
Baxter explained to her husband. "I was out, this afternoon, and she ate
nearly ALL of a five-pound box of candy."

Both the sad-eyed William and his father were dumfounded. "Where on
earth did she get a five-pound box of candy?" Mr. Baxter demanded.

"I'm afraid Jane has begun her first affair," said Mrs. Baxter. "A
gentleman sent it to her."

"What gentleman?" gasped William.

And in his mother's eyes, as they slowly came to rest on his in reply,
he was aware of an inscrutability strongly remindful of that inscrutable
look of Jane's.

"Mr. Parcher," she said, gently.

XII

PROGRESS OF THE SYMPTOMS

Mrs. BAXTER'S little stroke of diplomacy had gone straight to the mark,
she was a woman of insight. For every reason she was well content to
have her son spend his evenings at home, though it cannot be claimed
that his presence enlivened the household, his condition being one of
strange, trancelike irascibility. Evening after evening