treet.
Finally, unable to think of another resource, I sought the nearest
square, and put in a cold and miserable night on a bench, with
vagrants, beggars, and outcasts for company.

"At daylight, I rose and wandered slowly back toward the studio
building, to await the down-coming of my charge.

"At the door I met a disheveled, weary, and bleary-eyed wreck, who eyed
me sourly, and broke forth.

"'You're a nice sort of duffer, you are,' he said. 'You knew I was
drunk. You knew I didn't know what key I gave you. Why didn't you make
sure? I couldn't get into my boarding-house. I walked the street all
night.'

"'You did!' I responded. 'You walked the street all night, did you? Oh,
I'm so glad! I'm _so_ glad, Bunker! You walked the street, did you?
Well, I slept in the square--thanks to your condition, you unholy
inebriate!'

"'Where's my key?' he demanded, angrily, 'my boarding-house key? I want
to get in before breakfast-time.'

"'Up in my studio,' I answered, fully as tartly. 'Go up there and trade
keys; and don't bring any more of your friends around to me.'

"I went to a restaurant, spent my twenty-five cents for breakfast, and
then climbed to the studio. The door was unlocked, but the bird had
flown.

"I spent a miserable day, doing no work at all, but worrying greatly
over the fate of Mrs. Milner.

"But, at nightfall, having replenished my pockets from the bank, as I
was about to leave the building, to take the train for home, I met her,
bag and baggage in a cab at the door.

"Did you ever get a thorough scolding from an angry woman, or, as in
this case, from a good-natured woman pretending to be angry? But, alas!
I did not know that she was pretending, and I suffered horribly--on the
ride to the station and on the train. I was an unfaithful, treacherous
scoundrel, leaving a trusting and loving wife alone for a whole week,
and giving the use of 'my office'--in which there was a couch and an
ice-box and a gas-stove and a bath-tub and a clothes-closet (_for
hiding purposes_)--to a shameless person with a black-and-blue eye,
who had stared at her most insolently when she had come to the door.

"'I mean to tell your wife,' Mrs. Milner said, before we had reached
the Grand Central Station; and she repeated the threat a dozen times,
before we arrived at my house. Then, on the walk home, I, who had
maintained a moody silence all the way, plucked up heart, in the effort
to compose myself for the meeting with my