ifficulty subduing her transports--"I'll see, sir," said Milly.

Grunting with exasperation, Staff bent over a trunk and stuffed things
into it until Milly committed herself to the definite announcement: "I
don't seem to find nothing, sir."

"Look again, please."

Again Milly pawed the tissue-paper.

"There ain't nothing at all, sir," she declared finally.

Staff stood up, thrust his hands into his pockets and champed the stem
of his pipe--scowling.

"It is a bit odd, sir, isn't it?--having this sent to you like this and
you knowing nothing at all about it!"

Staff said something indistinguishable because of the obstructing
pipe-stem.

"It's perfectly beautiful, sir--a won'erful hat, really."

"The devil fly away with it!"

"Beg pardon, sir?"

"I said, I'm simply crazy about it, myself."

"Oh, did you, sir?"

"Please put it back and tie it up."

"Yessir." Reluctantly Milly restored the creation to its tissue-paper
nest. "And what would you wish me to do with it now, sir?" she resumed
when at length the ravishing vision was hidden away.

"Do with it?" stormed the vexed gentleman. "I don't care what the
d--ickens you do with it. It isn't my hat. Take it away. Throw it into
the street. Send it back to the place it came from. Give it ... or,
wait!"

Pausing for breath and thought, he changed his mind. The hat was too
valuable to be treated with disrespect, no matter who was responsible
for the mistake. Staff felt morally obligated to secure its return to
the Maison Lucille.

"Look here, Milly ..."

"Yessir?"

"I'll just telephone ... No! Half a minute!"

He checked, on the verge of yielding to an insane impulse. Being a
native of New York, it had been his instinctive thought to call up the
hat-shop and demand the return of its delivery-boy. Fortunately the
instinct of a true dramatist moved him to sketch hastily the ground-plot
of the suggested tragedy.

In _Act I_ (_Time: the Present_) he saw himself bearding the telephone
in its lair--that is, in the darkest and least accessible recess of the
ground-floor hallway. In firm, manful accents, befitting an intrepid
soul, he details a number to the central operator--and meekly submits to
an acidulated correction of his Amurrikin accent.

_Act II_ (_fifteen minutes have elapsed_): He is clinging desperately to
the receiver, sustained by hope alone while he attends sympathetically
to the sufferings of an English lady trying to get in communication wi