Baxter said:

"I think it's about time for you to go and dress for your Emerson Club
meeting, papa, if you intend to go."

"Do I have to dress?" Mr. Baxter asked, plaintively.

"I think nearly all the men do, don't they?" she insisted.

"But I'm getting old enough not to have to, don't you think, mamma?" he
urged, appealingly. "When a man's my age--"

"Nonsense!" she said. "Your figure is exactly like William's. It's the
figure that really shows age first, and yours hasn't begun to." And she
added, briskly, "Go along like a good boy and get it ever!"

Mr. Baxter rose submissively and went upstairs to do as he was bid. But,
after fifteen or twenty minutes, during which his footsteps had
been audible in various parts of the house, he called down over the
banisters:

"I can't find 'em."

"Can't find what?"

"My evening clothes. They aren't anywhere in the house."

"Where did you put them the last time you wore them?" she called.

"I don't know. I haven't had 'em on since last spring."