d trains.) No, he had driven. Ah, she said, that was wholly
different. Above, where one walked, there was nothing to shut out the
view of the river. Just to show that he was not a feeble old antiquarian,
he suggested their taking a walk there at once. She held out her trailing
garments and thin, blue slippers. And then she went on:

"There's another beautiful place I don't believe you know, for all you're
such an old New-Yorker--a pier at the foot of East Eighty-something
Street, where you can almost touch great seagoing vessels as they pass."

"Well, there at least we can go," said Mr. Lanley, and he stood up. "I
have a car here, but it's open. Is it too cold? Have you a fur coat? I'll
send back to the house for an extra one." He paused, brisk as he was; the
thought of those four flights a second time dismayed him.

The servant had gone out, and Pete was still absent, presumably breaking
the news of his engagement to Dr. Parret.

Mrs. Wayne had an idea. She went to a window on the south side of the
room, opened it, and looked out. If he had good lungs, she told him, he
could make his man hear.

Mr. Lanley did not visibly recoil. He leaned out and shouted. The
chauffeur looked up, made a motion to jump out, fearing that his employer
was being murdered in these unfamiliar surroundings; then he caught the
order to go home for an extra coat.

Lanley drew his shoulder back into the room and shut the window; as he
did so he saw a trace of something impish in the smile of his hostess.

"Why do you smile?" he asked quickly.

She did not make the mistake of trying to arrest her smile; she let
it broaden.

"I don't suppose you have ever done such a thing before."

"Now, that does annoy me."

"Calling down five stories?"

"No; your thinking I minded."

"Well, I did think so."

"You were mistaken, utterly mistaken."

"I'm glad. If you mind doing such things, you give so much time to
arranging not to do them."

Mr. Lanley was silent. He was deciding that he should rearrange some of
the details of his life. Not that he contemplated giving all his orders
from the fifth story, but he saw he had always devoted too much attention
to preventing unimportant catastrophes.

Under her direction he was presently driving north; then he turned
sharply east down a little hill, and came out on a low, flat pier. He put
out the motor's lights. They were only a few feet above the water, which
was as black as liquid jet, with fla