"Yes, sir. My name is Chittenden. Our hats got mixed up at Martin's this evening; my fault, as usual. I am always doing something absurd, my memory is so bad. When I discovered my mistake I was calling on the family of a client with whom I had spent most of the afternoon. I missed some valuable papers, legal documents. I believed as usual that I had forgotten to take them with me. They were nowhere to be found at the house. My client has a very mischievous son, and it seems that he stuffed the papers behind the inside band of my hat. With them there was a letter. I have had two very great scares. A great deal of trouble would ensue if the papers were lost. I just telephoned that I had located the hat." He laughed pleasantly. Good heavens! here was a howdy-do. "My dear Mr. Chittenden, there has been a great confusion," I faltered. "I had your hat, but--but you have come too late." "Too late?" he roared, or I should say, to be exact, shouted. "Yes, sir." "What have you done with it?" "Not five minutes ago I gave it to a Frenchman, who seemed to recognize it as his. It was the Frenchman, if you will remember, who sat near your table in the cafe." "And this hat isn't yours, then?"--helplessly. "This" was a flat-brimmed hat of the Paris boulevards, the father of all stovepipe hats, dear to the Frenchman's heart. "Candidly, now," said I with a bit of excusable impatience, "do I look like a man who would wear a hat like that?" He surveyed me miserably through his eye-glasses. "No, I can't say that you do. But what in the world am I to do?" He mopped his brow in the ecstasy of anguish. "The hat must be found. The legal papers could be replaced, but.... You see, sir, that boy put a private letter of his sister's in the band of that hat, and it must be recovered at all hazards." "I am very sorry, sir." "But what shall I do?" "I do not see what can be done save for you to leave word at the cafe. The Frenchman is doubtless a frequenter, and may easily be found. If you had come a few moments sooner...." With a gurgle of dismay he fled, leaving me with a half-finished sentence hanging on my lips and the Frenchman's chapeau hanging on my fingers. And _my_ hat; where was _my_ hat? (I may as well add here, in parenthesis, that the disappearance of my eight-dollar hat still remains a mystery. I have had to buy a new one.) So the boy had put a letter of his sister's in the band of the hat, I mused. How like _her_ kid brother! It seemed that more or less families had Toddy-One-Boys to look after. Pshaw! what a muddle because a man couldn't keep his thoughts from wool-gathering!