ht. May your sleep be undisturbed by my ghost stalking
solitary through your slumbers. May no fumes from my pipe interfere
with the violet de parme you represent. If you want any advertising
done, just call on me, William Canfield Brewer. I write poetry, draw
pictures, make up stories, and prove to the absolute satisfaction of
the most skeptical public that any article is even better than you say
it is. I command a princely salary,--but I can't command it long
enough. Adieu, I go, my lady, fare thee well.'

"'Good night.'

"I could hardly wait for breakfast, I was so anxious to ask about him.
I gleaned the following facts. The landlady had packed his belongings
in an old closet and rented me the room in his absence, as he surmised.
He is a darling old idiot who would rather buy the chauffeur a cigar
than pay for his board. He says it is less grubby. He is too good a
fellow to make both ends meet. He is too devoted to his friends to
neglect them for business. He can write the best ads in Chicago and
get the most money for it, but he can't afford the time. Mrs. Gaylord
is a stingy old cat, she always gets her money if she waits long
enough, and he pays three times as much as anything is worth when he
does pay. Mrs. Gaylord's niece is infatuated with him, without
reciprocation, and Mrs. Gaylord wanted her, the niece, to stick to the
grocer's son; she says there is more money in being advertised than
advertising others. Wouldn't Prudence faint if she could hear this
gossip? Don't tell her,--and I wouldn't repeat it for the world.

"I hoped he would come back for another room,--there is lots of
experience in him, I am sure, but he sent for his things. So that is
over. I found his pipe. And I am keeping it so if he gets smokey and
comes back he may have it.

"Oh, I tell you, Carol, Experience may teach in a very expensive
school, but she makes the lessons so interesting, it is really worth
the price.

"Lots of love to you both,

"From

"CONNIE."

CHAPTER XII

THE LAND O' LUNGERS

"Is Mrs. Duke in?"

David looked up quickly as the door opened. He saw a fair petulant
face, with pouting lips, with discontent in the dark eyes. He did not
know that face. Yet this girl had not the studied cheerfulness of
manner that marks church callers at sanatoriums. She did not look
sick, only cross. Oh, it was the new girl, of course. Carol had said
she was coming. And she was not really sick, just