"Please God they outweigh!" said Douglas. "Of course they will! It must be a few things I've seen lately that keep puzzling me." "What have you seen, Douglas?" questioned Leslie. "Deals in real estate," he answered. "Consultations with detectives and policemen, scientists and surgeons." "But what could that have to do with Nellie Minturn?" "Nothing, I hope," said Douglas, "but there has been a grimness about Minturn lately, a going ahead with jaws set that looks ugly for what opposes him, and you tell me they have been in opposition ever since they married. I can't put him from my thoughts as I saw him last." "And I can't her," said Leslie. "She was a lovely picture as she came across the silver moss carpet, you know that gray green, Douglas, her face flushed, her eyes wet, her arms full of those perfectly beautiful, lavender-pink fringed orchids. She's a handsome woman, dearest, and she never looked quite so well to me as when she came picking her way beneath the dark tamarack boughs. She was going to ask him to go with her to take her flowers to Elizabeth, and over that little white casket she intended--Why Douglas, he couldn't, he simply couldn't!" "Suppose he had something previously worked out that cut her off!" "Oh Douglas! What makes you think such a thing?" "What Minturn said to me this morning with such bitterness on his face and in his voice as I never before encountered in man," Douglas answered. "He said----?" prompted Leslie. "This is my _last_ day as a _laughing-stock_ for my fellowmen! To-morrow I shall hold up my head!" "Why didn't you tell me that _before?_" "Didn't realize until just now that you and she hadn't _seen_ him--that you were acting on presumption. "I'm going to call her!" cried Leslie. "I wouldn't!" advised Douglas. "Why not?" "After as far as she went to-day, if she had anything she wanted you to know, wouldn't she feel free to call you?" "You are right," conceded Leslie. "Even after to-day, for me to call would be an intrusion. Let's not talk of it further! Don't you wish we could take a peep at Mickey carrying the doll to the little sick girl?" "I surely do!" answered Douglas. "What do you think of him, Leslie?" "Great! Simply great!" cried the girl. "Douglas you should have heard him educate me on the doll question." "How?" he asked interestedly. "From the first glimpse I had of him, the thought came to me, 'That's Douglas' Little Brother'" she explained. "When you telephoned and said you were sending him to me, just one idea possessed me: to get what you wanted. Almost without thought at all I tried the first thing he mentioned, which happened to be a little sick neighbour girl he told me about. All girls like a doll, and I had one dressed for a birthday gift for a namesake of mine, and time plenty to fix her another. I brought it to Mickey and thought he'd be delighted." "Was he rude?" inquired Douglas anxiously.