"I used to be there a great deal in the old days. Unfortunately, Madam Bartlett and I had a misunderstanding. As a matter of fact, I have not crossed that threshold in--let me see--it must be fifteen years! It was a party, I remember, given for Eleanor, the little granddaughter, on her fifth birthday." "Oh, yes!" said Quin, finding Mr. Chester for the first time interesting. "They've got a picture of her taken with Miss Enid in her party dress." "I suppose you mean this?" Mr. Chester reached over and took from his desk a somewhat faded photograph, in a silver frame, of a little girl leaning against a big girl's shoulders, both enveloped in a cloud of white tulle. "Gee, but she was pretty!" exclaimed Quin, devouring every detail of Eleanor's chubby features. "A beautiful woman," sighed Mr. Chester--and Quin, looking up suddenly, surprised a look in his host's eyes that was anything but numerical. Obligingly relinquishing his application of the pronoun for Mr. Chester's, he said: "She certainly thinks a lot of you!" "How do you know?" demanded Mr. Chester. "From the way she talks. She says people are barking up the wrong tree when they think you are cold and indifferent and all that; says you've got one of the noblest natures _she_ ever knew." Quin was appalled at the effect of these words. Mr. Chester's eyes got quite red around the rims and his lips actually trembled. "Poor Enid!" he said. Then he remembered himself, or rather forgot himself, and became a Number Nine again, and bored Quin talking business until ten o'clock. At parting they shook hands cordially, and Mr. Chester urged him to come again. "I wonder if you would care to use one of my tickets for the Symphony Orchestra next week?" he asked. Quin looked embarrassed. He had accepted a similar invitation the week before, and had confided to Rose Martel afterward that he "never heard such a bully band playing such bum music." But Mr. Chester's intention was so kind that he could run no risk of offending him. "I'll go if I can," he said, leaving himself a loophole. "Here is the ticket," said Mr. Chester, "and in case you do not use it, perhaps you will so good as to pass it on to some one who can." This suggestion afforded Quin an inspiration. "Say, Miss Enid," he said the next morning at breakfast. "I want to give you a ticket to the Symphony Orchestra next Friday night. Will you go?" "But, my dear boy," she protested greatly touched, "I cannot go by myself." "You don't have to. I'm going to take you and come for you. You ain't going to turn me down, are you?" "Have you got the ticket?" "Right here. Now you will go, won't you?" It would have taken a less susceptible heart than Miss Enid's to resist Quin's persuasive tones, and in spite of Miss Isobel's disapprobation she agreed to go.