"Well, Donovan, I've often speculated about that, and my conclusion is that my mind is at its best when I'm asleep and enjoying a nightmare. I find the Welsh rabbit most stimulating to my thought voltage. Then I am, you may say, detached from myself; another mind not my own is building towers and palaces, and spiders as large as the far-famed though extinct ichthyosaurus are waltzing on the moon. Then, I have sometimes thought, my intellectual parts are most intelligently employed." "I may well believe you," I declared with asperity. "Now I hope I can pound it into you in some way that your presence in this neighborhood is offensive--to me--personally." He stared at the ceiling, silent, imperturbable. "And I'm going to give you safe conduct through the lines--or if necessary I'll buy your ticket and start you for New York. And if there's an atom of honor in you, you'll go peaceably and not publish the fact that you know the whereabouts of these ladies." He reflected gravely for a moment. "I think," he said, "that on the whole that's a fair proposition. But you seem to have the impression that I wish to annoy these ladies." "You don't for a moment imagine that you are likely to entertain them, do you? You haven't got the idea that you are necessary to their happiness, have you?" He raised himself on his elbow with some difficulty; flinched as he tried to make himself comfortable and began: "The trouble with Miss Pat is--" "There is no trouble with Miss Pat," I snapped. "The trouble between Miss Pat and me is the same old trouble of the buttons," he remarked dolorously. "Buttons, you idiot?" "Quite so. Buttons, just plain every-day buttons; buttons for buttoning purposes. Now I shall be grateful to you if you will refrain from saying "'Button, button, Who's got the button?'" The fellow was undoubtedly mad. I looked about for a weapon; but he went on gravely. "What does the name Gillespie mean? Of what is it the sign and symbol wherever man hides his nakedness? Button, button, who'll buy my buttons? It can't be possible that you never heard of the Gillespie buttons? Where have you lived, my dear sir?" "Will you please stop talking rot and explain what you want here?" I demanded with growing heat. "That, my dear sir, is exactly what I'm doing. I'm a suitor for the hand of Miss Patricia's niece. Miss Patricia scorns me; she says I'm a mere child of the Philistine rich and declines an alliance without thanks, if you must know the truth. And it's all on account of the fact, shameful enough I admit, that my father died and left me a large and prosperous button factory." "Why don't you give the infernal thing away--sell it out to a trust--"