tone. "Auntie, do tell Dr. Blake about some of your adventures with
those wonderful Yogis, and that fascinating rajah who was so kind to
us."

"The Yogis!" commented Dr. Blake to himself; "Ha, ha, and ho, ho! I bet
you learned a bag of tricks there, madam."

"Why, Annette, dear." Mrs. Markham laughed her purring laugh--that
laugh could grow, Dr. Blake discovered, until it achieved a singularly
unpleasant quality. "Your romantic ideas are running away with you.
Whenever we arrived anywhere, of course, like anybody else, I called at
Government House and the authorities there always put me in the way of
seeing whatever sights the neighborhood afforded. I met one rajah in
passing and visited one Yogi monastery. Do tell me about the
Philippines!" Annette settled back into her appearance of weariness.

Dr. Blake complied.

He had intended to stay an hour at this first formal call. He had hoped
to be led on, by gentle feminine wiles, to add another hour. He had
even dreamed that Aunt Paula might be so impressed by him as to hold
him until midnight. As a matter of fact, he left the house just
thirty-five minutes after he entered. Just why he retreated so early in
the engagement, he had only the vaguest idea. Even fresh from it as he
was, he could not enumerate the small stings, the myriad minor goads,
by which it became established in his mind that his call was not a
success, that he was boring the two ladies whom he was trying so hard
to entertain. At the end, it was a labored dialogue between him and
Mrs. Markham. Again and again, he tried to drag Annette into the
conversation. She was tongue-tied. The best she did was to give him the