loset, and now bear in mind it
has gone to the wash."

"Oh, all right!"

"Come in." This in answer to a knock at the door, and Bedelia, for such
was the lady attendant's name, reappeared.

"The man down at the door below sez as how he has no card wid him, but
that yez knows him very well already. He sez he's a customer."

"A what?" yelled Handy.

"A customer," shouted back Bedelia.

"A customer," echoed Handy, and then in his most agreeable manner
continued: "Now, my gentle friend, for I know you are gentle, and
therefore must be a friend, did not the man in the gap below tell you he
was a costumer, and not a customer? Think, for the difference between
the two is of some degree of importance."

"Well, sur, I may not be as well up in the new-fangled ways of spakin'
as some other people are. Begor! with yer cawn'ts an' shawn'ts, an'
chawnces, an' the divil only knows what in the way of pronunciayshon, a
dacint, hard-workin' gerl can't make out half what's said nowadays. You
call the man down-stairs wan thing an' I call him another, but both of
them are the same man. Arrah! what's the matther wid yez, at all, at
all?"

With this withering invective, Bedelia looked as if she could annihilate
Handy.

The veteran in an amusingly polite manner arose and bowed. "All right,
Bedelia, and if it's all the same to you, you may as well waltz the
customer up."

"Well, sur," she answered, with what she possibly considered satiric
dignity, "I'll sind him up, but I would like yez to understhand that
I've plinty to do widout climbing up and down two pair of stairs waitin'
on show-actors," and she then hurried out and bang! went the door.

"Fogg, my boy," said Handy, with a smile, "that handmaiden is a passion
flower. 'Twould be an injustice to the more modest posy to designate her
a daisy."

He was about to indulge in a laugh, when a masculine knock at the door
interrupted. Moving quietly across the room, he opened the door. A nod
of recognition and the costumer entered.

"Will you kindly take a seat, Mr. Draper?" he said in a subdued voice,
as he motioned the visitor to a chair beside the bed.

"It's awfully kind of you, Draper, to call," said Fogg in a feeble tone
of voice, at the same time extending his hand. "This is a bad blow. Who
would have thought this time yesterday that I would now be----"

"Hush!" interrupted Handy gently. "You must keep still and not grow
excited. You know what the doctor said." Then turnin