e shocking light, doing honest work and getting no return for it, he
could not help growing desperately blue.

But to-day Jaune d'Antimoine was not blue, for of a sudden he had come
to be stayed by a lofty purpose and upheld by a high resolve: and his
purpose and resolve were that within one month's time he would gain for
himself a new suit of clothes! There were several excellent reasons
which together served to fortify him in his exalted resolution. The
most careless observer could not fail to perceive that the clothes
which he wore--and which were incomparably superior to certain others
which he possessed, but did not wear--were sadly shabby; and Vandyke
Brown had asked him to be best man at his wedding; and further--and
this was the strongest reason of all--Jaune d'Antimoine longed, from
the very depths of his soul, to make himself pleasing in the eyes of
Rose Carthame.

How she managed it none but herself knew; but this charming young
person, although the daughter of a widowly exile of France who made an
uncertain living by letting lodgings in the region between south and
west of Washington Square, always managed to dress herself
delightfully. It is true that feminine analysis might reveal the fact
that the materials of which her gowns were made were of the cheapest
product of the loom; yet was feminine envy aroused--yea, even in the
dignified portion of Fifth Avenue that lies not south but north of
Washington Square--by the undeniable style of these same gowns, and by
their charming accord with the stylish gait and air of the trig little
body who wore them. Therefore it was that when Monsieur Jaune
graciously was permitted to accompany Mademoiselle Rose in her jaunts
into the grand quarter of the town, the propriety of her garments and
the impropriety of his own brought a sense of desolation upon his
spirit and a great heaviness upon his loyal heart.

For Jaune loved Rose absolutely to distraction. To say that he would
have laid his coat in the mud for her to walk over does not--the
condition of the coat being remembered--imply a very superior sort of
devotion. He would have done more than this; he would have laid himself
in the mud, and most gladly, that he might have preserved from
contamination her single pair of nice shoes. Even a cool and
unprejudiced person, being permitted to see these shoes--and he
certainly would have been, for Rose made anything but a mystery of
them--would have declared that such gal