"I always agree with you, Charlie," said the girl, with a smile. "What possible good would it do me if I didn't?" "Oh, you could--but you'll excuse me, I'm sure. I see the waiter is preparing to serve my table with real food, which is something I have a confessed predilection for. Good-by--I'm perfectly charmed to have seen you all." And Mr. Wilkinson returned to Amye and the Cotuits. "Don't look so scandalized, Aunt Mary," said Helen to her relation. "He is really much less abandoned than he would have people believe; and I think Isabel will bring him out all right yet. I rather fancy she has decided to." "Isabel Hurd, you mean?" responded Miss Wardrop. "You don't mean to say so! But, bless your heart, I'm not scandalized--I've heard boys talk before. Still, if your friend Isabel knows what she is about, she won't stay South too long; she'll come North and let Amye go back to Hoboken." "Probably she will. But I have not seen the three macaroons which I won with such ease and finesse." "Waiter," said Smith, disregarding the fact that they had not finished the entree, "bring three macaroons--exactly three--right away." An expression of slight mystification appeared on the broad brow of the waiter, but he was inured to eccentric gastronomic requests, and fulfilled this one with his accustomed dignity. "There!" said Smith. "There's my bet paid, though strictly speaking you couldn't have held me for it, since you were betting on a certainty." "May I pass the spoils?" replied the girl, with a laugh. The memory of those three macaroons had to stand Smith in the stead of other things for the last days of November. On his arrival at the office on the morning following Thanksgiving Day, Mr. O'Connor requested him to go down to Baltimore on company business requiring some little time to transact, and not until after the first of December did he set foot again in New York. He arrived at about eight o'clock in the morning; and as he was obliged to go home first, he did not reach William Street until nearly ten. As he entered the Guardian office, he was aware that something unusual had happened. Business seemed somehow to have been oddly interrupted. Around the map desks and file cases little groups of clerks were gathered, talking in low tones. Smith watched them in silence for a moment, and as no one volunteered to enlighten him as to what had occurred, he walked over to Mr. Bartels's office and went in. "What's the matter here this morning? Is there a conflagration anywhere?" he asked the stolid personage at the desk, who barely ceased his figuring to make response:-- "Go and see the boss. He and O'Connor have had a quarrel--funny business--I don't know anything about it, that's all."