At the moment J. B. looked exceedingly foolish. Her interest was gratifying, of course; there was something almost maternally sweet in it. But it put him, as he phrased it to himself, in an awful box. "You--you're not vexed, are you?" said Muriel, holding her chin steady by an effort. The young man glanced at her, and surprised an expression that caused him to look away, crimsoning. The next instant he inwardly cursed himself savagely for a despicable cad. Couldn't a nice girl look at him without his imagining----! "Oh, I wouldn't get mad about a little thing like that, Miss Baxter," he said heartily. "I'm feeling pretty stuck-up about your--your speaking of it at all, you know. Of course, it _is_ a Tom-fool costume, but I've let myself in for it now, and I can't very well back out, and leave them without anybody at the last minute. And I won't look any sillier than the others--not so silly as Ted for instance, in women's clothes." "Oh, he doesn't make any difference!" said Muriel, almost with impatience. "Well, he thinks he's pretty important, anyway," J. B. said, wondering privately what they would have done without the comparatively safe and conservative ground of Teddy Johns' character and abilities for a retreat, when the conversational horizon grew overcast. "In the second play especially--making away with peoples' diamond coronets and things! Mrs. Pallinder's going to let us have all hers. She's got some sparklers, you know, regular headlights; you've seen her wear them? Tell you, if I were in Ted's place, I wouldn't want to have 'em in my charge, even for a few minutes--and it's all through the last two acts--until the place where they drag him out from behind the screen, after I'm supposed to shoot him, remember?" "Yes, where you say: 'Don't put the handcuffs on a dead man, men!'" "And Billy Potter says: 'He ain't dead; you can't kill that kind with a blast o' dynamite. I guess these here's your tiary, lady.' Ted's going to have it all done up in a package in his inside pocket. He says he's going to keep the things in his clothes the whole time. There are so many servants around, and the carpenters to fix the scenery, and the caterer's men--you can't be too careful. 'Twouldn't do to leave a five-thousand-dollar diamond necklace lying around loose; everybody in town knows about that necklace, I guess." "Do you suppose Mr. Potter really looks at all like a detective?" J. B. laughed. "No. He cocks his hat over one eye, and acts that tough way, just to give the part a kind of snap--a little go, you know. But the only detective I ever knew was a very quiet, gentlemanly sort of fellow. We had a little trouble at the bank once, and had this chap--his name was Judd--there for a couple of weeks, in plain clothes, you know. He didn't look like Vidocq either--not a bit. He looked like--like--well, a nice young fellow clerking in a shoe-store, say." "Fancy!"