Happily, anticlimax was spared them by the arrival of the person
for whom the visitor had asked at the door, and the young man
retained the rose in his hand.

Mr. Madison, a shapeless hillock with a large, harassed, red face,
evidently suffered from the heat: his gray hair was rumpled back
from a damp forehead; the sleeves of his black alpaca coat were
pulled up to the elbow above his uncuffed white shirtsleeves; and
he carried in one mottled hand the ruins of a palm-leaf fan, in
the other a balled wet handkerchief which released an aroma of
camphor upon the banana-burdened air. He bore evidences of
inadequate adjustment after a disturbed siesta, but, exercising a
mechanical cordiality, preceded himself into the room by a genial
half-cough and a hearty, "Well-well-well," as if wishing to
indicate a spirit of polite, even excited, hospitality.

"I expected you might be turning up, after your letter," he said,
shaking hands. "Well, well, well! I remember you as a boy.
Wouldn't have known you, of course; but I expect you'll find the
town about as much changed as you are."

With a father's blindness to all that is really vital, he
concluded his greeting inconsequently: "Oh, this is my little girl
Cora."

"Run along, little girl," said the fat father.

His little girl's radiant glance at the alert visitor imparted her
thorough comprehension of all the old man's absurdities, which had