“I won’t do it, Sam,” I said, when I had draped his dress-coat on me toga fashion. “Who am I to have clothing to spare, like this, when many a poor chap hasn’t even a cellar door to cover him. I won’t do it; I’m selfish, but not that selfish.” “Lord,” he said, wiping his face, “how you’ve kept your figure! I can’t wear a belt any more; got to have suspenders.” He reflected over his grievance for some time, sitting on the side of the bed. “You _could_ go as you are,” he said finally. “We do it all the time, only to-night happens to be the annual something or other, and—” he trailed off into silence, trying to buckle my belt around him. “A good six inches,” he sighed. “I never get into a hansom cab any more that I don’t expect to see the horse fly up into the air. Well, Allie isn’t going either. She turned down Granger this afternoon, the Annapolis fellow you met on the stairs, pigeon-breasted chap—and she always gets a headache on those occasions.” He got up heavily and went to the door. “Granger is leaving,” he said, “I may be able to get his dinner coat for you. How well do you know her?” he asked, with his hand on the knob. “If you mean Dolly—?” “Alison.” “Fairly well,” I said cautiously. “Not as well as I would like to. I dined with her last week in Washington. And—I knew her before that.” Forbes touched the bell instead of going out, and told the servant who answered to see if Mr. Granger’s suitcase had gone. If not, to bring it across the hall. Then he came back to his former position on the bed. “You see, we feel responsible for Allie—near relation and all that,” he began pompously. “And we can’t talk to the people here at the house—all the men are in love with her, and all the women are jealous. Then—there’s a lot of money, too, or will be.” “Confound the money!” I muttered. “That is—nothing. Razor slipped.” “I can tell you,” he went on, “because you don’t lose your head over every pretty face—although Allie is more than that, of course. But about a month ago she went away—to Seal Harbor, to visit Janet MacLure. Know her?” “She came home to Richmond yesterday, and then came down here—Allie, I mean. And yesterday afternoon Dolly had a letter from Janet—something about a second man—and saying she was disappointed not to have had Alison there, that she had promised them a two weeks’ visit! What do you make of that? And that isn’t the worst. Allie herself wasn’t in the room, but there were eight other women, and because Dolly had put belladonna in her eyes the night before to see how she would look, and as a result couldn’t see anything nearer than across the room, some one read the letter aloud to her, and the whole story is out. One of the cats told Granger and the boy proposed to Allie to-day, to show her he didn’t care a tinker’s dam where she had been.” “Good boy!” I said, with enthusiasm. I liked the Granger fellow—since he was out of the running. But Sam was looking at me with suspicion.