“Well, that was it,” said Mr. Allen gently. “She just said, ‘No!’ She didn’t say ‘No, thank you.’ No, sir, nothing like that; just plain ‘No!’ ‘Well,’ I thought to myself, ‘now why is that? Naturally, she’d _want_ to go to the concert, wouldn’t she? Why, of course she would; it’s the first public event that’s happened since the lecture on “Liquid Air” at Masonic Hall, along back in February. Certainly she’d want to go. Well, then, what’s the matter? It must be simply she doesn’t want to go with _you_, Lucius Brutus Allen!’ That’s what I said to myself, Joe. ‘You’re practically a fat old man from _her_ point of view,’ I said to myself. ‘She wants to go, but you aren’t the fellow she wants to go _with_. Well, who is it? Evidently,’ I reasoned, ‘evidently he hasn’t turned up, because she’s just the least bit snappish the way she tells me she isn’t pining for _my_ escort.’ Well, sir, I began to cast around in my mind to think who on earth it could be. ‘It isn’t Henry Wheen,’ I thought, ‘because she discouraged Henry so hard, more than a year ago, that Henry went and married that waitress here at his father’s hotel. And it isn’t Bax Lewis,’ I thought, ‘because she showed Bax _he_ didn’t stand any chance from the first. And it isn’t Charlie McGregor or Cal Veedis,’ I thought, ‘because she just _wouldn’t_ have anything to do with either of them, though they both tried to make her till the judge pretty near had to tell ’em right out that they’d better stay away. Well, it isn’t Doc Willis, and it isn’t Carlos Bollingbroke Thompson, nor Whit Connor,’ I thought, ‘because they’re _old_ bachelors like me—and that just about finishes the list.’ Well, sir, there’s where I had to scratch my head. ‘It must be somebody,’ I thought, ‘somebody that hasn’t been coming around the Ricketts property at all, so far, because she’s never gone any place she could help with those that _have_ been coming around there.’ Then I thought of you, Joe. ‘By George!’ I thought. ‘By George, it might be Joe Perley! He’s the only young man in town not married, engaged, or feeble-minded, that hasn’t ever showed any interest in Miss Mary. There’s no two ways about it: likely as not it’s liable to be Joe Perley!’” “I never heard anything crazier in my life!” Joe said. “I don’t suppose Mary Ricketts has given me two thoughts in the last five years.” Mr. Allen tilted back in his chair, his feet upon a rung of the table. He placed his cigar at the left extremity of his mouth, gazed at the ceiling, and waved his right hand in a take-it-or-leave-it gesture. “Well, _why_ would she?” Joe demanded. “There’s nothing about _me_ that——” “No,” said his friend. “Nothing except she doesn’t know you very well.” At that Joe Perley laughed. “You are the funniest old Lucius!” he said. “Just because I’ve never been around there and the rest have, you say that proves——”