veral incidents should have been
discussed for days thereafter--every eye growing the brighter in the
telling--was to have been expected. Kitty could talk of nothing
else. The beauty of the room; the charm of Masie's costume; Kling's
generosity; and last, O'Day's bearing and appearance as he led the child
through the stately dance, looking, as Kitty expressed it, "that fine
and handsome you would have thought he was a lord mayor," were now her
daily topics of conversation.

Masie was equally enthusiastic, rushing down-stairs the next morning to
throw her arms around his neck with an "Oh, Uncle Felix, I never, NEVER,
NEVER was so happy in all my life!"

Kling was still more jubilant. The success of Masie's banquet room had
established him at once among bric-a-brac dealers as a competitor quite
out of the ordinary. His old customers came in flocks, walking about
with gasps of astonishment. Before the week was out, a masonic lodge had
bought the throne, a seaside resort the big Chinese lantern, and two of
the four Spanish chairs had found a home in a millionaire's library.

Moreover--and this was all the more remarkable in view of his early
training--a certain deference became apparent in the Dutchman's manner
not only toward Felix but toward his customers. He no longer received
them in his shirt-sleeves. He bought some new clothes and sported a
collar, necktie, and hat, duplicating those worn by Felix as near as his
memory served.

Still more remarkable were the changes wrought among the neighbors in
their attitude toward O'Day. Until then they had, in their independent
fashion, treated him like any of the other men who came in and out their
several stores, pleased with his interest in the business, but quickly
forgetting him as they became reabsorbed in the affairs of the day. Now,
as they told him what a good time they had had on the birthday, they
raised their hats. Porterfield went so far as to tell the radiant Kitty
that her boarder was a "Jim Dandy," and that if she should lay her hands
on another to "trot him out."

Kitty of course had expected these triumphs, but that it was she who had
made them possible, and that but for her own individual efforts Felix
might still be wandering around the streets in search of bed and board,
apparently never crossed her mind. He would have been just as splendid,
she said to herself, and just as much of a man no matter who had helped
and no matter where his feet had landed.