tural and ordinary. "I wish you'd done so sooner. Poor old Tootles.
Write to the Devon Yacht Club, Long Island, and let me know how you get
on. We've all three been up against some rotten bad luck, haven't we?
Good-by, then. I'll go up to Tootles now."

"No, no," she said, "don't. That'd bring my old uncle to life right
away. She'd guess you was in on this, all right. Slip off and let me
have a chance with my movie stuff." With a mixture of emotion and
hilarity she suddenly waved the check above her head. "Can you imagine
the fit the receiving teller at my little old bank'll throw when I slip
this across as if it meant nothing to me?"

And then she caught up one of Martin's hands and did the most
disconcerting thing of all. She pressed it to her lips and kissed it.

Martin got as red as a beet. "Well, then, good-by," he said, making for
the door. "Good luck."

"Good-by and good luck to you. My word, but you've made optimism sprout
all over my garden, and I thought the very roots of it were dead."

For a few minutes after Martin was gone, she danced about her appalling
room, and laughed and cried and said the most extraordinary things to
her dogs. The little pink beast became hysterical again, and the Chow
leaped into a bundle of under-clothing and worried the life out of it.
Finally, having hidden the check in a safe place, the girl ran upstairs
to break the good news of her uncle's death to Tootles. Why, they could
do the thing like ladies, the pair of them. It was immense, marvellous,
almost beyond belief! That old man of Wisconsin deserved a place in
Heaven.... Heaven--Devon.

It was an inspiration. "Gee, but that's the idea!" she said to herself.
"Devon--and the sight of that boy. That'll put the pep back, unless I'm
the original nut. And if he doesn't care about her now, he may
presently. Others have."

And when she went in, there was Tootles staring at the wall, and
through it and away beyond at the place Martin had called the
Cathedral, and at Martin, with his face dead-white because Joan had
turned and gone.

VII

It was a different Tootles who, ten days later, sat on a bank of dry
ferns that overlooked a superb stretch of water and watched the sun go
down. The little half-plucked bird of the Forty-sixth Street garret
with the pale thin face and the large tired eyes had almost become the
fairy of Joan's hill once more, the sun-tanned little brother of Peter
Pan again. A whole week of the air o