It was as though I had completely vanished. So far as the lovely
Miss Briggs was concerned I had ceased to exist. She turned toward
a nice old lady.

"What can I show you, Mrs. Scudder?" she asked cheerily; "and how
is that wonderful baby? "

I felt as though I had been lifted by the collar, thrown out upon
a hard sidewalk, and my hat tossed after me. Greatly shaken, and
mentally brushing the dust from my hands and knees, I hastened to
the ferry and crossed to Fairharbor. I was extremely angry. By an
utter stranger I had been misjudged, snubbed and cast into outer
darkness. For myself I readily found excuses. If a young woman was
so attractive that at the first sight of her men could not resist
buying her fifty-dollar books and hiring automobiles in which to
take her driving, the fault was hers. I assured myself that girls
as lovely as Miss Briggs were a menace to the public. They should
not be at large. An ordinance should require them to go masked. For
Miss Briggs also I was able to make excuses. Why should she not
protect herself from the advances of strange young men? If a
popular novelist, and especially an ex-popular one, chose to go
about disguised as a drummer for the Blue Bird automobile and
behaved as such, and was treated as such, what right had he to
complain? So I persuaded myself I had been punished as I deserved.
But to salve my injured pride I assured myself also that any one
who read my novels ought to know my attitude toward any lovely lady
could be only respectful, protecting, and chivalrous. But with this
consoling thought the trouble was that nobody read my novels.

In finding Harbor Castle I had no difficulty. It stood upon a rocky