the incongruities of their dismantled guestroom. Presumably, the poet
was aver here for a lecture tour--he would be entertained and fêted
everywhere by the cultured rich, for the appreciation which Stockton had
started by his modest little essay had grown to the dimension of a fad.

He looked again at the telegram which had shattered the simple routine
of his unassuming life. "On board Celtic dock this afternoon three
o'clock hope see you. Verne." He sneezed sharply, as was his unconscious
habit when nervous. In desperation he stopped at a veterinary's office
on Frankfort Street, and left orders to have the doctor's assistant call
for Lorna Doone and take her away, to be kept until sent for. Then he
called at a wine merchant's and bought three bottles of claret of a
moderate vintage. Verne had said something about claret in one of his
playful letters. Unfortunately, the man's grandfather was a Frenchman,
and undoubtedly he knew all about wines.

Stockton sneezed so loudly and so often at his desk that morning that
all his associates knew something was amiss. The Sunday editor, who had
planned to borrow fifty cents from him at lunch time, refrained from
doing so, in a spirit of pure Christian brotherhood. Even Bob Bolles,
the hundred-and-fifty-dollar-a-week conductor of "The Electric Chair,"
the paper's humorous column, came in to see what was up. Bob's
"contribs" had been generous that morning, and he was in unusually good
humour for a humourist.

"What's the matter, Stock," he inquired genially, "Got a cold? Or has
George Moore sent in a new novel?"

Stockton looked up sadly from the proofs he was correcting. How could he
confess his paltry problem to this debonair creature who wore life