"Smart man, too," said the matrimonial agent. "He graduated from the
university in Evanston and was a lawyer and a good one, until a friend
fired off one of those big duck guns in his ear for a joke."

Taking the odalisque with him in a cab, Mr. Middleton was off for the
residence of Mr. Crayburn.

"Will she have me?" asked Mr. Crayburn, when he had read Mr.
Middleton's hastily penciled account of the main facts of his
connection with the fair Moslem, wherein for brevity's sake he had
omitted any mention of the fifteen hundred dollars the emir had given
him for assuming charge of her.

"Of course," wrote Mr. Middleton.

"I never saw a more beautiful woman," exclaimed Mr. Crayburn. "By the
way, have you noticed any predilections, habits, wants, it would be
well for me to know about?"

"She smokes," wrote Mr. Middleton, not knowing why he wrote it, and
wishing like the devil that he hadn't the moment he had.

"All Oriental women smoke. I will ask her not to as soon as she learns
English."

Mr. Middleton was amazed to think that such a simple solution had not
occurred to him. But he was glad it was so, for he had not been
unscathed by Cupid's darts there last night and he might not now be
about to visit the young lady of Englewood.

"Your fee," said Mr. Crayburn.

Mr. Middleton had not thought of this. He looked about at the
handsomely furnished room. He thought of the five thousand dollars a
year and the very much smaller income he could offer the young lady of
Englewood. He thought of these things and other things. He thought of
the young lady of Englewood; of the odalisque, toward whom he occupied
the position of what is known in law as next friend. She sat behind
him, out of his sight, but he saw her, saw her as he saw her for the
first time, when, ripping the bag away, she lay there in her piteous,
appealing helplessness.

"There is no fee. The maiden even has a dowry of fifteen hundred
dollars. Please invest it in her name. Oh, sir, treat her kindly."

"Treat her kindly!" exclaimed the deaf man with emotion. "He would be
a hound who could ill treat one so helpless and friendless, a stranger
in a strange land, whose very beauty would be her undoing, were she
without a protector."

Much relieved, Mr. Middleton prepared to depart and the odalisque saw
she was not to be included in his departure. She noted the luxurious
appointments of the house, so different from the threadbare and seedy
furnishings o