er of them (as we may assume) knocked
memorially upon his door....

What trouble was brewing for his frail friend Dal?

* * * * *

Upon this matter, now and henceforward, the other House was to have
information first. Dusk of that day had fallen before the word came to
the deserted hotel. But when it did come, the lame doctor broke his
evening office-hour without notice, and caught a train by
thirty seconds.

II

Two Persons of More Importance, and why they went to the
Beach in October; Miss Carlisle Heth, and how she met an
unwelcome swain at Sea; how this Swain could swim enough
for one.

Mr. Heth perused the Severe Arraignment of himself about nine o'clock,
over his second cup of coffee. He perused with indignation; but, being
long since trained to keep a neat partition between downtown and uptown,
he did not divulge his sentiments to the breakfast-table, and even
carried the paper off with him to the office. By such demeanor, he
abdicates our present notice. Mrs. Heth, hours later, bought a copy of
the "Post" from a uniformed newsboy, to see what they had to say of the
Associated Charities meeting on the evening preceding, and of her
remarks in accepting the office of First Vice-President. Absorbed by
this particular piece-in-the-paper,--for so the good lady named all
journalistic efforts, from dry-goods advertisements to leading
editorials on Trouble in the Balkans,--it was past three-thirty o'clock,
post-meridian, or well after luncheon, before her eye chanced to alight
on the Dabney House's winged words.

At this hour the ladies sat at ease in their private sitting-room on the
seventh floor of the great handsome caravansary by the sea. For to-day,
as it falls out, the House of Heth, just as we have it so firmly fixed
on Washington Street, had split and transplanted itself; all that
mattered of it, the soul and genius of the House, having flitted off
seventy miles to the Beach for an over-Sunday rest.

It was the 29th of October, which should have meant grate-fires. On the
contrary, two windows in the rented sitting-room were open, and Miss
Carlisle Heth, laying down "Pickwick Papers," by Dickens, the
well-known writer, now rose and flung wide the third.

"Whew!" said she, just as an ordinary person might have done. "It's
stifling!"

Her mother, a lifelong conservative, presently replied:

"It isn't the heat, it's the humidity."

Carl