nd-hand suit-case. It was covered with labels of hotels in France
and Switzerland.

"Joe," I said, "if you carry that bag you will be a walking falsehood."

Kinney's name is Joseph Forbes Kinney; he dropped the Joseph because he
said it did not appear often enough in the Social Register, and could be
found only in the Old Testament, and he has asked me to call him Forbes.
Having first known him as "Joe," I occasionally forget.

"My name is NOT Joe," he said sternly, "and I have as much right to
carry a second-hand bag as a new one. The bag says IT has been to
Europe. It does not say that I have been there."

"But, you probably will," I pointed out, "and then some one who has
really visited those places--"

"Listen!" commanded Kinney. "If you want adventures you must be somebody
of importance. No one will go shares in an adventure with Joe Kinney, a
twenty-dollar-a-week clerk, the human adding machine, the hall-room boy.
But Forbes Kinney, Esq., with a bag from Europe, and a Harvard ribbon
round his hat--"

"Is that a Harvard ribbon round your hat?" I asked.

"It is!" declared Kinney; "and I have a Yale ribbon, and a Turf Club
ribbon, too. They come on hooks, and you hook 'em on to match your
clothes, or the company you keep. And, what's more," he continued, with
some heat, "I've borrowed a tennis racket and a golf bag full of sticks,
and you take care you don't give me away."

"I see," I returned, "that you are going to get us into a lot of
trouble."

"I was thinking," said Kinney, looking at me rather doubtfully, "it
might help a lot if for the first week you acted as my secretary, and
during the second week I was your secretary."

Sometimes, when Mr. Joyce goes on a business trip, he takes me with him
as his private stenographer, and the change from office work is very
pleasant; but I could not see why I should spend one week of my holiday
writing letters for Kinney.

"You wouldn't write any letters," he explained. "But if I could tell
people you were my private secretary, it would naturally give me a
certain importance."

"If it will make you any happier," I said, "you can tell people I am a
British peer in disguise."

"There is no use in being nasty about it," protested Kinney. "I am only
trying to show you a way that would lead to adventure."

"It surely would!" I assented. "It would lead us to jail."

The last week in August came, and, as to where we were to go we still
were undecided, I suggest