t of talking
to strange gents like this."

"I am quite sure you are not," said Guy Peel, very gravely, and bowed
slightly before he went south on Clark Street, and she went north.

Dear Reader, will you take my hand while I assist you to make a one
year's leap. Whoop-la! There you are.

A man and a woman approached Tony's news stand. You are quite right.
But her willow plume was purple this time. A purple willow plume would
make Mario Doro look sophisticated. The man was sandy-haired, raw-boned,
with a loping gait, very blue eyes, very white teeth, and an
objectionably apparent Adam's apple. He came from the north, and she
from the south.

In story books, and on the stage, when two people meet unexpectedly after
a long separation they always stop short, bring one hand up to their
breast, and say: "You!" Sometimes, especially in the case where the
heroine chances on the villain, they say, simultaneously: "You! Here!"
I have seen people reunited under surprising circumstances, but they
never said, "You!" They said something quite unmelodramatic, and
commonplace, such as: "Well, look who's here!" or, "My land! If it
ain't Ed! How's Ed?"

So it was that the Purple Willow Plume and the Adam's Apple stopped,
shook hands, and viewed one another while the Plume said, "I kind of
thought I'd bump into you. Felt it in my bones." And the Adam's Apple
said:

"Then you're not living in Kewaskum--er--Wisconsin?"

"Not any," responded she, briskly. "How do you happen to be straying
away from the tapestries, and the yew trees and the ghost, and the pink
roses, and the garden gloves, and the silver tea-service with the
coat-of-arms on it?"

A slow, grim smile overspread the features of the man. "You tell yours
first," he said.

"Well," began she, "in the first place, my name's Mercedes Meron, of the
Morning Glory Burlesquers, formerly Sadie Hayes of Kewaskum, Wisconsin.
I went home next day, like I said I would. Say, Mr. Peel (you said Peel,
didn't you? Guy Peel. Nice, neat name), to this day, when I eat lobster
late at night, and have dreams, it's always about that visit home."

"How long did you stay?"

"I'm coming to that. Or maybe you can figure it out yourself when I tell
you I've been back eleven months. I wired the folks I was coming, and
then I came before they had a chance to answer. When the train reached
Kewaskum I stepped off into the arms of a dowd in a
home-made-made-over-year-before-l