eld familiarity somewhat
at bay.

However, there followed a whispered consultation between the two
clerks, and both chuckled, and finally Sam Riggs advanced with
bravado to the office door.

"Mr. Anderson," he said, with mischief in his tone, and Anderson
turned and looked at him inquiringly. "Oh, it is nothing, not worth
speaking of, I suppose," said Sammy Riggs, "but that kid, the Carroll
boy, swiped an apple off that basket beside the door when he went out
with his sister. I saw him."

Chapter XII

Anderson was in the state of mind of a man who dreams and is quite
aware all the time that he is dreaming. He deliberately indulged
himself in this habit of mind. "When I am ready, I shall put all this
away," he continually assured his inner consciousness. Then into the
delicious charm of his air-castle he leaped again, mind and body. In
those days he grew perceptibly younger. The fire of youth lit his
eyes. He fed on the stimulants of sweet dreams, and for the time they
nourished as well as exhilarated. Everybody whom he met told him how
well he looked and that he was growing younger every day. He was
shrewd enough to understand fully the fact that they considered him
far from youth, or they would not have thus expressed themselves, but
the triumph which he felt when he saw himself in his looking-glass,
and in his own realization of himself, caused him to laugh at the
innuendo. He felt that he _was_ young, as young as man could wish to
be. He, as before said, had never been vain, but mortal man could not
have helped exultation at the sight of that victorious visage of
himself looking back at him. He did not admit it to himself, but he
took more pains with his dress, although he had always been rather
punctilious in that direction. All unknown to himself, and, had he
known it, the knowledge would have aroused in him rebellion and
shame, he was carrying out the instinct of the love-smitten male of
all species. In lieu of the gorgeous feathers he put on a new coat
and tie, he trimmed his mustache carefully. He smoothed and lighted
his face with the beauty of joy and hope and of pleasant dreams. But
there was, since he was a man at the head of creation, something more
subtle and noble in his preening. In those days he became curiously
careful--although, being naturally clean-hearted, he had little need
for care--of his very thoughts. Naturally fastidious in his soul
habits, he became even more so. The very books h