“Well, I found them! And where do you suppose I'd put them? I found them under your window-seat. Can you think of anything more absurd than putting them there and then forgetting it? I took them to the tailor's to have them let out. They were getting too tight for papa, but they'll be all right for him when the tailor sends them back.” What the stricken William gathered from this it is impossible to state with accuracy; probably he mixed some perplexity with his emotions. Certainly he was perplexed the following evening at dinner. Jane did not appear at the table. “Poor child! she's sick in bed,” Mrs. Baxter explained to her husband. “I was out, this afternoon, and she ate nearly ALL of a five-pound box of candy.” Both the sad-eyed William and his father were dumfounded. “Where on earth did she get a five-pound box of candy?” Mr. Baxter demanded. “I'm afraid Jane has begun her first affair,” said Mrs. Baxter. “A gentleman sent it to her.” “What gentleman?” gasped William. And in his mother's eyes, as they slowly came to rest on his in reply, he was aware of an inscrutability strongly remindful of that inscrutable look of Jane's. “Mr. Parcher,” she said, gently. XII PROGRESS OF THE SYMPTOMS Mrs. BAXTER'S little stroke of diplomacy had gone straight to the mark, she was a woman of insight. For every reason she was well content to have her son spend his evenings at home, though it cannot be claimed that his presence enlivened the household, his condition being one of strange, trancelike irascibility. Evening after evening passed, while he sat dreaming painfully of Mr. Parcher's porch; but in the daytime, though William did not literally make hay while the sun shone, he at least gathered a harvest somewhat resembling hay in general character. Thus: One afternoon, having locked his door to secure himself against intrusion on the part of his mother or Jane, William seated himself at his writing-table, and from a drawer therein took a small cardboard box, which he uncovered, placing the contents in view before him upon the table. (How meager, how chilling a word is “contents”!) In the box were: A faded rose. Several other faded roses, disintegrated into leaves. Three withered “four-leaf clovers.” A white ribbon still faintly smelling of violets. A small silver shoe-buckle. A large pearl button. A small pearl button. A tortoise-shell hair-pin. A cross-section from the heel of a small slipper. A stringy remnant, probably once an improvised wreath of daisies. Four or five withered dandelions. Other dried vegetation, of a nature now indistinguishable.