Miss Sullivan’s dancing days were over, except when she was kind enough to practice with a débutante, or teach some awkward youth the graces in a turn or two. The music, however, was fine, and the girls, at first, fresh and not all crumpled. So she, too, was pleased with the pretty sight. But it grew no prettier, and presently she walked away from the hotel out upon the rocks. The music mingled softly with the plashing sea. The fall of waves was like the trembling of many leaves; each dot of water on the dark rocks was a diamond, filled with a diminished moon. Here, too, was the breeze that told of love; the lulling beat of waves said softly love, and the great, dreamy, mysterious sea, over all its brilliant and shimmering calm, seemed permeated by an infinite spirit of eternal love. Looking out upon it, Miss Sullivan’s face softened and saddened, and her eyes filled again with tears. About this time, Mr. Waddy, on his bench in Boston Common, feeling that the end of his third cheroot was about to frizzle the tips of his moustache, was taking a last, long puff, when a mosquito, suddenly sailing in, nipped his nose. The sufferer immediately discovered that his life was a burden. He threw away his stump with great violence, walked back to his hotel, and laid down his burden under a mosquito-bar. CHAPTER X OUR HERO RENEWS HIS YOUTH IN THE WARMTH OF AN OLD FRIENDSHIP As Mr. Waddy was glancing over his paper at breakfast next morning, he caught sight of a name once familiar. “Perhaps I did wrong,” thought he, not for the first time, “to close all intercourse with people here when I went away. ‘Perkins & Tootler’ advertising everywhere. There can’t be two men named Tootler. It must be my old schoolfellow. I’ll go down and see if he remembers me.” Large letters in the directory informed him of the firm’s address--Perkins & Tootler, wool merchants, Throgmorton Perkins, Thomas Tootler. Ira easily found the store. Everything looked busy and prosperous. The air around was filled with a fine flocculent haze which caused Mr. Waddy to rub his nose. “Tommy doesn’t need to advertise that he’s in wool,” thought he. “In clover, too, I should think.” All within the store of P. & T. was bustle. Wool-gathering there meant quite the opposite of witlessness. In reply to Mr. Waddy’s inquiry for Mr. Tootler, a busy clerk pointed to the inner office. The door was shut, and as Mr. Waddy knocked, he heard a queer, suppressed sound, half musical, half melancholy, like the wheeze of a country church organ when Bellows, immersed in his apple, has forgotten his duty of blast. “Come in,” said a voice. As Ira entered, the person within was engaged in hurrying something into the pocket of his grey morning coat. The person was a short, bald, jolly fatling, all abloom with pink freshness. He looked a compound of _père de famille_ and jolly dog. His abiding rosiness was rosier now with a blush as of one detected; it grew ruddier as the stranger addressed him.