In this instant a spell laid hold on Chester Pilkins. As one exalted he went through the picture, doing his share and more than his share to make it what a picture should be. For being suddenly possessed with the instinct to act--an instinct which belongs to all of us, but which some of us after we have grown up manage to repress--Chester acted. In his movements there was the unstudied carelessness which is best done when it is studied; in his fashion of carrying his furled umbrella and his strapped steamer rug--the Ziegler Company had furnished the steamer rug but the umbrella was his own--there was natural grace; in his quick start of recognition on beholding some dear one in the imaginary throng waiting down on the pier out of sight there was that art which is the highest of all arts. With your permission we shall skip the orange groves, languishing through that day for Mr. and Mrs. Chester K. Pilkins to come and see them. We shall skip the San Francisco Exposition. We shall skip the Yosemite Valley, in which to Chester there seemed to be something lacking, and the Big Trees, which after all were much like other trees, excepting these were larger. These things the travellers saw within the scope of three weeks, and the end of those three weeks and the half of a fourth week brings them and us back to 373 Japonica Avenue. There daily Chester watched the amusement columns of the _Eagle_. On a Monday evening at seven-fifteen he arrived home from the office, holding in his hand a folded copy of that dependable sheet. "Chester," austerely said Mrs. Pilkins as he let himself in at the door, "you are late, and you have kept everything waiting. Hurry through your dinner. We are going over to the Lewinsohns for four-handed rummy and then a rarebit." "Not to-night, Gertrude Maud," said Chester. "And why not to-night?" demanded the lady with a rising inflection. "Because," said Chester, "to-night we are going to the Bijou Palace Theatre. The Prince of the Desert goes on to-night for the first run." "Oh," said Mrs. Pilkins understandingly. "I'll telephone Mrs. Lewinsohn we can't come--make some excuse or other. Yes, we'll go to the Bijou Palace." She said this as though the idea had been hers all along.