ervant.

It was the young woman who had named Wahaska, and he saw now that his
first impression had been at fault; she was not overdressed. Also he saw
that she was piquantly pretty; a bravura type, slightly suggesting the
Rialto at its best, perhaps, but equally suggestive of sophistication,
travel, and a serene disregard of chaperonage.

The young woman's companion was undeniably her father. Gray,
heavy-browed, and with a face that was a life-mask of crude strength and
elemental shrewdness, the man had bequeathed no single feature to the
alertly beautiful daughter; yet the resemblance was unmistakable.
Griswold did not listen designedly, but he could not help overhearing
much of the talk at the other end of the table. From it he gathered that
the young woman was lately returned from some Florida winter resort;
that her father had met her by appointment in St. Louis; and that the
two were going on together; perhaps to Wahaska, since that was the
place-name oftenest on the lips of the daughter.

Griswold was only moderately interested. The deliberately ordered
supper, enticing in anticipation, had fallen short of the zestful
promise in the fact. It came to him with a little shock that at least
one part of him, the civilized appetite, had become debased by the
plunge into the deck-hand depths, and he fought the suggestion fiercely.
It was an article in his creed that environment is always subjective,
and when one opens the door to an exception a host of ominous shapes may
be ready to crowd in. He was fighting off the evil shapes while he
listened; otherwise his interest might have been more acute.

It was at this point that the apex of Philistine contentment was passed
and the reaction set in. He had been spending strength and vitality
recklessly and the accounting was at hand. The descent began when he
took himself sharply to task for the high-priced supper. What right had
he to order costly food that he could not eat when the price of this
single meal would feed a family for a week?

After that, nothing that the obsequious and attentive waiter could bring
proved tempting enough to recall the vanished appetite. Never having
known what it was to be sick, Griswold disregarded the warning, drank a
cup of strong coffee, and went out to the lobby to get a cigar, leaving
his table companions in the midst of their meal. To his surprise and
chagrin the carefully selected "perfecto" made him dizzy and faint,
bringing a disq