He had always possessed an attitude of amused and tolerant patronage for the City of Brotherly Love--it was the birthright of any typical New Yorker--and yet since that inconsiderable adventure in Rittenhouse Square, he had discovered undreamed-of virtues in the Pennsylvania metropolis. It was a city not of apartments, but of homes--homes in which men lived with their families and brought up interesting children in the old-fashioned way--a city of conservative progress, of historic association, of well-guarded tradition--an American city, in short--which New York was not. At the Bachelors' Club he sang its praises, and mentioned a plan of wintering there, but was laughed at for his pains. Anything unusual and extraordinary was to be expected of Mortimer Crabb. But a winter in Philadelphia! This was too preposterous. Crabb said nothing in reply. He only smiled politely and when the _Blue Wing_ was put in commission went off on a cruise with no other company but his thoughts and Captain Jepson. Jepson under ordinary circumstances would have been sufficient, but now Mortimer Crabb spent much time in a deck chair reading in a book of poems, or idly gazing at the swirl of foam in the vessel's wake. Jepson wondered what he was thinking of, for Crabb was not a man to spend much time in dreaming, and the Captain would have given much that he possessed to know. He would have been surprised if Mortimer Crabb had told him. To tell the truth Crabb was thinking--of a parasol. He was wondering if after all, his judgment had been erring. The lady in the Square had left the parasol, it was true. But then all the tribe of parasols and umbrellas seemed born to the fate of being neglected and forgotten, and there was no reason why this particular specimen of the genus should be exempt from the frailties of its kind. As he remembered, it was a flimsy thing of green silk and lace, obviously a French frippery which might be readily guilty of such a form of naughtiness. It had long worried him to think that he might have misjudged the sleeping princess--as he had learned to call her--and he knew that it would continue to worry him until he proved the matter one way or another for himself. Had she really forgotten the parasol? Or had she--not forgotten it? The cruise ended, the summer lengthened into fall, and winter found Mortimer Crabb established in residence at a fashionable hotel in Philadelphia. Letters had come from New York to certain Philadelphia dowagers in the councils of the mighty, to the end that in due course Crabb accepted for several desirable dinners, and before he knew he found himself in the full swing of a social season. And so when the night of the Assembly came around, he found himself dining at the house of one of his sponsors in a party wholly given over to the magnification of three tremulous young female persons, who were to receive their _cachet_ and certificate of eligibility in attending that ancient and honorable function.