briar-wood pipe.

"Well I'll be hanged," growled Stanton, "if I'm going to be strung by
any boy!" Out of all proportion the incident irritated him.

But when, the next evening, a perfectly tremendous bunch of yellow
jonquils arrived with a penciled line suggesting, "If you'll put these
solid gold posies in your window to-morrow morning at eight o'clock,
so I'll surely know just which window is yours, I'll look up--when I
go past," Stanton most peremptorily ordered the janitor to display the
bouquet as ornately as possible along the narrow window-sill of the
biggest window that faced the street. Then all through the night he
lay dozing and waking intermittently, with a lovely, scared feeling in
the pit of his stomach that something really rather exciting was about
to happen. By surely half-past seven he rose laboriously from his bed,
huddled himself into his black-sheep wrapper and settled himself down
as warmly as could be expected, close to the draughty edge of the
window.




V


"Little and lame and red-haired and brown-eyed," he kept repeating to
himself.

Old people and young people, cab-drivers and jaunty young girls, and
fat blue policeman, looked up, one and all with quick-brightening