On the following Monday, Thomas Trotter entered the service of Mrs. Millidew, and on the same day Stuyvesant Smith-Parvis returned to New York after a hasty and more or less unpremeditated visit to Atlantic City, where he experienced a trying half hour with the unreasonable Mr. Carpenter, who spoke feelingly of a personal loss and most unfeelingly of the British Foreign Office. Every nation in the world, he raged, has a foreign office; foreign offices are as plentiful as birds'-nests. But Tom Trotters were as scarce as hen's-teeth. He would never find another like him. "And what's more," he interrupted himself to say, glowering at the shocked young man, "he's a gentleman, and that's something you ain't,--not in a million years." "Ass!" said Mr. Smith-Parvis, under his breath. "What's that?" roared the aggrieved one. "Don't shout like that! People are beginning to stare at--" "Thank the Lord I had sense enough to engage a private detective and not to call in the police, as you suggested. That would have been the limit. I've a notion to hunt that boy up and tell him the whole rotten story." "Go ahead and do it," invited Stuyvie, his eyes narrowing, "and I will do a little telling myself. There is one thing in particular your wife would give her ears to hear about you. It will simplify matters tremendously. Go ahead and tell him." Mr. Carpenter appeared to be reflecting. His inflamed sullen eyes assumed a misty, faraway expression. "For two cents I'd tell you to go to hell," he said, after a long silence. "Boy!" called Mr. Smith-Parvis loftily, signalling a passing bell-hop. "Go and get me some small change for this nickel." Mr. Carpenter's face relaxed into a sickly grin. "Can't you take a joke?" he inquired peevishly. "Never mind," said Stuyvie to the bell-boy. "I sha'n't need it after all." "What I'd like to know," mused Mr. Carpenter, later on, "is how in thunder the New York police department got wind of all this." Mr. Smith-Parvis, Junior, wiped a fine moisture from his brow, and said: "I forgot to mention that I had to give that plain-clothes man fifty dollars to keep him from going to old man Cricklewick with the whole blooming story. It seems that he got it from your bally private detective." "Good!" said the other brightly. "You got off cheap," he added quickly, catching the look in Stuyvie's eye. "I did it to spare Cricklewick a whole lot of embarrassment," said the younger man stiffly. "I don't get you." "He never could look me in the face again if he found out I was the man he was panning so unmercifully the other night at our own dinner table." He wiped his brow again. "'Gad, he'd never forgive himself." Which goes to prove that Stuyvie was more considerate of the feelings of others than one might have credited him with being. * * * * *