h his pockets as he does with the corners and cupboards and
shelves and drawers of his house. It usually happens over our late supper,
after his day in town. He sets down his teacup, struck with a sudden
memory. He feels in his vest pockets--first the right, then the left. He
proceeds to search himself, murmuring, "I thought something came to-day
that I wanted to show you--oh, here! no, that isn't it. I thought I put
it--no, those are to be--what's this? No, that's a memorandum. Now, where
in--" He runs through the papers in his pockets twice over, and in the
second round I watch him narrowly, and perhaps see a corner of an envelope
that does not look like office work. "There, Jonathan! What's that? No,
not that--that!"

He pulls it out with an air of immense relief. "There! I knew I had
something. That's it."

When we travel, the same thing happens with the tickets, especially if
they chance to be costly and complicated ones, with all the shifts and
changes of our journey printed thick upon their faces. The conductor
appears at the other end of the car. Jonathan begins vaguely to fumble
without lowering his paper. Pocket after pocket is browsed through in this
way. Then the paper slides to his knee and he begins a more thorough
investigation, with all the characteristic clapping and diving motions
that seem to be necessary. Some pockets must always be clapped and others
dived into to discover their contents.

No tickets. The conductor is halfway up the car. Jonathan's face begins to
grow serious. He rises and looks on the seat and under it. He sits down
and takes out packet after packet of papers and goes over them with
scrupulous care. At this point I used to become really anxious--to make
hasty calculations as to our financial resources, immediate and
ultimate--to wonder if conductors ever really put nice people like us off
trains. But that was long ago. I know now that Jonathan has never lost a
ticket in his life. So I glance through the paper that he has dropped or
watch the landscape until he reaches a certain stage of calm and definite
pessimism, when he says, "I must have pulled them out when I took out
those postcards in the other car. Yes, that's just what has happened."
Then, the conductor being only a few seats away, I beg Jonathan to look
once more in his vest pocket, where he always puts them. To oblige me he
looks, though without faith, and lo! this time the tickets fairly fling
themselves upon him, wit