e."

"Oh, it will all come out in the wash."

"It depends on how dirty the linen is!"

"American men," I said, "never seem to have the courage to retrench.
Why not take your family to a cheap boarding-house for a year or two?
Cut the Gordian knot and get right down to bed rock? Boarding-house
food may be bad for the spirit, but it's good for the body. My father
had dyspepsia one spring, and his doctor told him to spend six weeks in
a summer hotel--_any_ summer hotel--and take _all_ his meals in it."

Just then one of the bell-boys interrupted us. He said that Mrs.
Fulton wished to speak with me. He followed me into the coat room,
where the telephone is, in a persistent sort of way, so that I turned
on him rather sharply and asked what he wanted.

His eyes were bulging with a look of importance and his black face had
an expression of mystery. "She ain't on de telephone," he said, "she's
outside."

"Well, why couldn't you say so?"

I went out bareheaded into the dusk and walked quickly between the
bedded hyacinths and the evergreen hedges of Carolina cherry to the
sidewalk. But she wasn't there. Far up the street I saw a familiar
horse and buggy, and a whip that signaled to me.

She was all alone. Even Cornelius Twombley, as much a part of the
buggy as one of the wheels, had been dropped off somewhere.

"I haven't seen you all day," she said. "I thought maybe you'd like to
go for a little drive."

I simply climbed into the buggy and sat down beside her.

"Evelyn and Dawson," she explained, "were crowding the living-room, so
I thought of this. Is John in the Club?"

"He was, but he said good-night to Harry Colemain and me, and I think
he went home. . . . How is everything? I saw you and John from afar,
walking together. I knew you could run because I've seen you play
tennis, but I didn't suppose you'd ever learned to walk. You're always
either on a horse or behind one."

"Was it very bold of me to come to the Club for you? I suppose I ought
to have telephoned." Then she laughed. "I ought to have had more
consideration of your reputation," she said.

"My reputation will survive," I said. "But look here, Lucy----"

"I'm looking!"

"I meant look with your mind. I don't know if I ought to bring it up;
it's just gossip. Harry saw John coming out of the President's room in
the bank. He said it looked to him as if John had been trying to make
a touch and hadn't gotten away with it. You kn