p
the crossing, leaving Miss Bubble to Wallingford.

"It's a beautiful evening, isn't it?" said Fannie, as Wallingford
caught step with her.

Wallingford had to hark back. Time had been when the line of
conversation which went with Miss Bubble's opening remark had been as
familiar to him as his own safety razor, but of late he had been
entertaining such characters as Beauty Phillips, and conversation with
the Beauty had consisted of lightning-witted search through the ends
of the earth and the seas therein for extravagant hyperbole and
metaphor. Harking back was so difficult that J. Rufus gave it up.

"Lovely evening," he admitted. "I've just been thinking about this
weather. I've about decided to build a factory to put it up in boxes
for the Chicago Market. They'd pay any price for it there in the
fall."

Miss Fannie considered this remark in silence for a moment, and then
she laughed, a quiet, silvery laugh that startled J. Rufus by its
musical quality.

"I don't see why you should laugh," protested Wallingford gravely. "If
a man can get a monopoly on weather-canning it would be even better
than the sleep-factory idea I've been considering."

"What was that like?" asked Fannie, interested in spite of the fact
that these jokes were not at all the good old standards, which could
be laughed at without the painful necessity of thought.

"Well," Wallingford explained, "I figured on building an immense
dormitory and hiring about a thousand fat hoboes to sleep for me night
and day. Then I intended to take that sleep and condense it and put it
up in eight-hour capsules for visitors to New York. There ought to be
a fortune in that."

Again a little silence and again that little silvery laugh which
Wallingford found himself watching for.

"You're so funny," said Miss Fannie.

"For a long time I was divided between that and my anti-bum serum as a
permanent investment," he went on, glancing down at her as he
extended himself along the line which had seemed to catch her fancy.
She was looking up at him, her eyes shining, her lips half parted in
an anticipatory smile, and unconsciously her hand had crept upon his
arm, where it lay warm and vibrant. "You know," he explained, "they
inoculate a guinea-pig or a sheep or something with disease germs, and
from this animal, somehow or other, they extract a serum which cures
that disease. Well, I propose to get a herd of billy-goats boiling
spifflicated, and extract from them