party returning from a picnic in the suburbs.

"Would you mind telling me," asked Farr of the policeman who was
guarding the corner, "who that young man is--the one there in the gray
automobile?"

"With the bleached blonde and the pretty girl?" asked the officer. "Oh,
that's Colonel Dodd's nephew--Dicky Dodd. Of course you know who the
colonel is."

"Yes," said Farr. He opened his mouth to ask another question, for the
policeman seemed to be of the obliging sort. Then he closed his lips
resolutely and marched along.

"What's the use?" he muttered. "Two dark eyes and a red mouth--and I am
almost forgetting how to be a philosopher."

Farther down the city thoroughfare he met one who had claimed to be
a philosopher. It was Jared Chick, stalking along the sidewalk in his
home-made armor. He held a box of stove-polish in one hand and a brush
in the other, and as he strolled he was giving his corselet and such
parts of the armor as he could handily reach a glossy coat--a gleaming
and burnished surface. On his helmet in place of a crest Knight Chick
bore aloft a metal banneret inscribed, "Invincible Stove Polish."

"And the mission?" asked Farr, halting his quondam companion, who had
been too intent upon his business to pay heed to passers.

"I find thee changed, and no doubt thee, too, finds me changed," sighed
Mr. Chick.