"My younger girl's impression was quite different. In spite of all he had told us about his wealthy father and his lumber-forests, she said she didn't believe but what if the truth were known he would be discovered to be a New York drummer in the button business or perhaps a Western man in the ham trade. "'Well, my dears, I am going to tell you something about him that will surprise you. He is not what you have said, Minnie, nor what you have said, Jennie, nor what he himself said: he is simply nothing more nor less than a pickpocket!' "The girls were first horrified, then they laughed: the farce of a thing is very apparent to heedless youth. No doubt the other youthful individual was laughing at the farcicality now. As for me, I could scarcely see the joke. The matter was not so serious as it might have been, however, for the bulk of my money was stitched in the bosom of my dress; but I had kept out about four hundred dollars to pay for a set of silverware which was not ready at the last moment, and that money my friend had seen in my pocket-book when I paid him for the tickets. I discovered the loss at the supper-table almost the instant he left my chair, and my rising and going outside was the natural impulse to stop a thief. I knew now only too well when the transfer had taken place: it was at that blissful moment when this new pattern of a Romeo had pressed up to the side of his silly and elderly Juliet in a tender half embrace. The youthful philosopher was quite right in saying I did not know what the future had in store for me: I had not the remotest conception that in less than an hour it would disclose to my dull mind that I had met a pickpocket in the guise and with the apparent feelings of a gentleman--not to say a lover."