"

"Little Florence."

"Why, that's curious," Cousin Virginia murmured. "I must telephone and
ask her mother about that."

The brooding Herbert looked up, and there was a gleam in his dogged eye;
but he said nothing.

"Go on," Aunt Harriet urged. "What did Noble do?"

"Why, his mother said he just went up to his room and changed his shoes
and necktie----"

"I thought so," Aunt Fanny whispered. "Crazy!"

"And then," Mr. Atwater continued, "he left the house and she supposed
he'd gone down to the office; but she was uneasy, and telephoned his
father. Noble hadn't come. He didn't come all afternoon, and he didn't
go back to the house; and they telephoned around to every place he
_could_ go that they know of, and they couldn't find him or hear
anything about him at all--not anywhere." Mr. Atwater coughed, and
paused.

"But what," Aunt Harriet cried;--"_what_ do they think's become of him?"

"Old man Dill said they were all pretty anxious," said Mr. Atwater.
"They're afraid Noble has--they're afraid he's disappeared."

Aunt Fanny screamed.

Then, in perfect accord, they all turned to look at Herbert, who rose
and would have retired upstairs had he been permitted.

As that perturbing evening wore on, word gradually reached the most
outlying members of the Atwater family connection that Noble Dill was
missing. Ordinarily, this bit of news would have caused them no severe
anxiety. Noble's person and intellect were so
commonplace--"insignificant" was the term usually preferred in his own
circle--that he was considered to be as nearly negligible as it is
charitable to consider a fellow-being. True, there was one thing that
set him apart; he was found worthy of a superlative when he fell in love
with Julia; and of course this distinction caused him to become better
known and more talked about than he had been in his earlier youth.

However, the eccentricities of a person in such an extremity of love are
seldom valued except as comedy, and even then with no warmth of heart
for the comedian, but rather with an incredulous disdain; so it is safe
to say that under other circumstances, Noble might have been missing,
indeed, and few of the Atwaters would have missed him. But as matters
stood they worried a great deal about him, fearing that a rash act on
his part might reflect notoriety upon themselves on account of their
beautiful relative--and _The North End Daily Oriole_. And when nine
o'clock came and Mrs. Dill repo