Things went on in this peaceful, happy fashion at home and abroad until one day when Mark suddenly decided to have a Thorough Understanding with his Helpmeet. He pulled down his vest and the cover of his desk, slapped his granite derby on one Ear Hook, and pounded heavily homeward for the Finals. Ten minutes later he opened the door of the little round-shouldered Apartment and called hoarsely to his Mate. There was no answer. Then he called again not quite so Arizona, but Silence again responded. Mark heard the water dripping in the kitchen sink. The little alarm clock on a chair in Her bedroom ticked like a steam riveter. One of Mark’s twenty-five cent pure silk hose lay on the rocker where She always sat. There was a needle and thread still in the sock. Everything in the place seemed kind of stiff and churchy—like a Scotch parlor on the Sabbath. Mark hung around the middle of the floor for a few moments and then flopped on the sofa to think things over. It was boisterously quiet. The chairs all stood around looking at him like a lot of pall bearers waiting for the sign to catch hold. A curtain moved slightly in the breeze, and the rod of it tapped on the window sill. It was a quiet little tap—kind of uncanny, like a spirit rap. “I’m beat,” said Mark, after a long pause, packed with ache. “If she would only breeze through that door right now, I’d chase pebbles up the beach all day long for her, or swim out and fetch sticks.” A thought struck him. He got up, put on his o’rourke, and, closing the door ever so lightly behind him, slipped over to the florist’s. A moment later he returned with a great armful of lilacs. He looked as if he had pinched them—there were so many. Every vase in the house he filled with them, and then stuck the balance in empty milk bottles, pitchers, tin cans, and back of the pictures. “There!” he said, surveying the job, “that will fix things up between us, and please her when she returns.” Then Mark went back to his office and worked like a stoker. That night when he returned home, the Right One met him at the door. “I wish you had not put those old lilacs all over the place,” she opened up testily, “Just look at that floor!” _Lesson for Today:_ What’s the use! HOT SKETCH NO. 17 TWO BUSINESS BAGGERS OF PUNKTON IN THE small burdock town of Punkton two rival manufacturing plants wiggled for supremacy. The destinies of one were ably steered by a veneered razorback named Grabit. At the helm of the other stood one, Fairman by name. Grabit was a Pillar and had a pew right down front, a little to windward. He used to sit ample and contented every Sunday morning listening to the little chinless preacher extol his Sterling Virtues to the blank-faced congregation. Fairman wasn’t cutting any bold slashing figure as a Pillar and he was the only man in town who wasn’t wasting away worrying about it.