“Oh, you darling!” exclaimed Zoie, all of a flutter, and looking exactly like an animated doll. “You've just saved my life.” She called to the taxi driver to “wait.” “Are you in trouble?” asked the guileless Jimmy. “Yes, dreadful,” answered Zoie, and she thrust a half-dozen small parcels into Jimmy's arms. “I have to be at my dressmaker's in half an hour; and I haven't had a bite of lunch. I'm miles and miles from home; and I can't go into a restaurant and eat just by myself without being stared at. Wasn't it lucky that I saw you when I did?” There was really very little left for Jimmy to say, so he said it; and a few minutes later they were seated tete-a-tete in one of Chicago's most fashionable restaurants, and Zoie the unconscious flirt was looking up at Jimmy with apparently adoring eyes, and suggesting all the eatables which he particularly abominated. No sooner had the unfortunate man acquiesced in one thing and communicated Zoie's wish to the waiter, than the flighty young person found something else on the menu that she considered more tempting to her palate. Time and again the waiter had to be recalled and the order had to be given over until Jimmy felt himself laying up a store of nervous indigestion that would doubtless last him for days. When the coveted food at last arrived, Zoie had become completely engrossed in the headgear of one of her neighbours, and it was only after Jimmy had been induced to make himself ridiculous by craning his neck to see things of no possible interest to him that Zoie at last gave her attention to her plate. In obeyance of Jimmy's order the waiter managed to rush the lunch through within three-quarters of an hour; but when Jimmy and Zoie at length rose to go he was so insanely irritated, that he declared they had been in the place for hours; demanded that the waiter hurry his bill; and then finally departed in high dudgeon without leaving the customary “tip” behind him. But all this was without its effect upon Zoie, who, a few moments later rode away in her taxi, waving gaily to Jimmy who was now late for business and thoroughly at odds with himself and the world. As a result of the time lost at luncheon Jimmy missed an appointment that had to wait over until after office hours, and as a result of this postponement, he missed Aggie, who went to a friend's house for dinner, leaving word for him to follow. For the first time in his life, Jimmy disobeyed Aggie's orders, and, later on, when he “trundled off to bed” alone, he again recalled that it was Zoie Hardy who was always causing hard feeling between him and his spouse. Some hours later, when Aggie reached home with misgivings because Jimmy had not joined her, she was surprised to find him sleeping as peacefully as a cherub. “Poor dear,” she murmured, “I hope he wasn't lonesome.” And she stole away to her room.