rt of her lost weight, but he felt as if at the
moment he had lost Syrilla. He could not picture her as a sylph of one
hundred and fifty pounds. He was worried, indeed, as he sat eating his
lunch in Mrs. Pilker's mansion. It was then he heard a voice:--

"Say, are you the feller they call Bugg?"

Mr. Gubb looked up. In the dining-room door stood a man who looked
like Napoleon Bonaparte gone to seed.

"If the party you are looking for to seek," said Mr. Gubb with
somewhat offended pride, "is Mister P. Gubb, him and me are one and
the same party. My name is P. Gubb, deteckative and paper-hanger."

"Well, youse is the party I'm looking for," said the stranger. "I got
a hunch from Horton, the wall-paper-store feller, that youse was up
here and that youse wanted a helper. Does youse?"

"If you know paper-hanging as a trade and profession and can go to
work immediately at once, I could use you," said Mr. Gubb. "I've got
more jobs than I can handle alone by myself."

"Say, me a paper-hanger?" said the stranger scornfully. "Why, sport,
I've hung more wall-paper than youse ever saw, see? Honest, when I
butted in here and saw that there Dietz's 7462 Bessie John on the
wall--"

"That what?" asked Philo Gubb.

"That there Dietz's 7462 Bessie John, on the wall there," explained
the stranger. "Don't youse even know the right name of that
wall-paper there, that's been a Six Best Seller for the last three
years?"

"It is a forest tapestry," said Mr. Gubb.

"Sure, Mike!" said the stranger. "And one of the finest youse ever
seen. Looks like youse could walk right into it and pick hickory nuts
off them oak trees, don't it? It's one of me old friends."

Philo Gubb took another bite of sandwich and masticated it slowly.

"Let me teach youse something," said the stranger, and he took a roll
of the tapestry paper in his hand and unrolled a few feet. He pointed
to the margin of the printed side of the paper with his oily
forefinger. "Do youse see them printings?" he asked. "Says 7462 B J,
don't it?"

"It does," mumbled Philo Gubb.

"Well, say! This here wall-paper feller Dietz--he makes this here
paper, don't he? And that there 7462 is the number of this here forest
tap. pattern, see? And B J--that's Bessie John--that tells youse what
the coloring is, see? Bessie John is the regular nature coloring, see?
They got one with pink trees and yeller sky, for bood-u-wars and
bedrooms. That's M S--Mary Sam."

"It is a very ingeniou