If his position that she was just the wife for Donald lay silently abandoned somewhere behind him: if the business could no longer be viewed as Donald's idle-hour amusement, but all at once had come to look decidedly serious: still, what under heaven was the use of giving Mary another and more rousing warning? He had warned Mary once, and what was the result? Two calls from Donald to Angela in the course of a single afternoon. No; if the labor of taking off was now to follow "putting on," it was clear that some hand far subtler than the too manly Mary's would have to do the job. And he knew whose hand was plainly indicated, too.... And then the young man remembered, with a surprising uprush of relief and freedom, that this day was Friday, and Donald was off to New York to-night, within an hour or two. And the foolish youth would be gone a solid week, too, with Mr. Jenney and Mr. Tilletts left in possession of the field. Thus, Walter Taylor, on his box, received a small surprise. Instead of giving him a new number, Mr. Garrott unexpectedly produced a dollar-bill from his pocketbook, and tossed it up to him with a sudden laugh. "That's all, Walter. _I'll walk!_" XIX Donald Manford's absence in far-away New York saw the calendar into February. It was a month which for some time had held a fixed place in Charles's thought, as Mary Wing's last month at home. Now the days had brought him this new concern, by no means unrelated to Mary's impending departure. That Donald was his concern now, as well as hers, he had acknowledged, once and for all, in that moment of pause by the hack: and none saw more clearly than he that the acknowledgment was a damaging one, opening long vistas of annoying possibilities. Well it might be that all he had once planned and worried for himself, and much more, he would now have to plan and worry for his weak and amorous friend. And suppose Mary Wing went off, leaving the whole business still unsettled? However, there was no use in borrowing trouble. For the present, Donald's well-wishers enjoyed an interlude of complete repose. And on or about the day of the simpleton's return to the danger-zone, it was recalled, he was to be whisked off again to the Helen Carson house-party, where all might end happily yet. Mary deserved her tittle of credit for that arrangement, at any rate. Charles, making the most of these peaceful days, reconsecrated himself to Letters and the finding of his Line.