Produced by Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. THE FASHIONABLE ADVENTURES OF JOSHUA CRAIG A NOVEL BY DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS CONTENTS I.--MR. CRAIG ARRAYS HIMSELF II.--IN THE BEST SOCIETY III.--A DESPERATE YOUNG WOMAN IV.--"HE ISN'T LIKE US" V.--ALMOST HOOKED VI.--MR. CRAIG IN SWEET DANGER VII.--MRS. SEVERENCE IS ROUSED VIII.--MR. CRAIG CONFIDES IX.--SOMEWHAT CYCLONIC X.--A BELATED PROPOSAL XI.--MADAM BOWKER HEARS THE NEWS XII.--PUTTING DOWN A MUTINY XIII.--A MEMORABLE MEETING XIV.--MAGGIE AND JOSH XV.--THE EMBASSY GARDEN PARTY XVI.--A FIGHT AND A FINISH XVII.--A NIGHT MARCH XVIII.--PEACE AT ANY PRICE XIX.--MADAM BOWKER'S BLESSING XX.--MR. CRAIG KISSES THE IDOL'S FOOT XXI.--A SWOOP AND A SCRATCH XXII.--GETTING ACQUAINTED XXIII.--WHAT THE MOON SAW AND DID XXIV.--"OUR HOUSE IS AFIRE" XXV.--MRS. JOSHUA CRAIG THE FASHIONABLE ADVENTURES OF JOSHUA CRAIG CHAPTER I MR. CRAIG ARRAYS HIMSELF It was one of the top-floor-rear flats in the Wyandotte, not merely biggest of Washington's apartment hotels, but also "most exclusive"--which is the elegant way of saying most expensive. The Wyandotte had gone up before landlords grasped the obvious truth that in a fire-proof structure locations farthest from noise and dust should and could command highest prices; so Joshua Craig's flat was the cheapest in the house. The ninety dollars a month loomed large in his eyes, focused to little-town ideas of values; it was, in fact, small for shelter in "the DE LUXE district of the de luxe quarter," to quote Mrs. Senator Mulvey, that simple, far-Western soul, who, finding snobbishness to be the chief distinguishing mark of the Eastern upper classes, assumed it was a virtue, acquired it laboriously, and practiced it as openly and proudly as a preacher does piety. Craig's chief splendor was a sitting-room, called a parlor and bedecked in the red plush and Nottingham that represent hotel men's probably shrewd guess at the traveling public's notion of interior opulence. Next the sitting-room, and with the same dreary outlook, or, rather, downlook, upon disheveled and squalid back yards, was a dingy box of a bedroom. Like the parlor, it was outfitted with furniture that had degenerated upward, floor by floor, from the spacious and luxurious first-floor suites. Between the two rooms, in dark mustiness, lay a bathroom with suspicious-looking, wood-inclosed plumbing; the rusted iron of the tub peered through scuffs and seams in the age-grayed porcelain.