She knocked. No answer came. Listening, she heard inside the familiar whirr of an electric fan mingling with a sound she could not for the moment place--a buzzing as of many flies, but rising and falling at more rhythmic intervals. She turned the knob. Within, drawn by an open window through which might be glimpsed the broad Ohio rolling drowsily, stood a decrepit Morris chair which Joan recognized as an old friend; wherein lay sprawled at comfortable length the Major. At his elbow stood a bottle and a glass, both empty. His handsome nose, forgetting for the moment all acquaintance with the grindstone, was tilted at the angle of least resistance, and from it issued the rhythmic buzzing that had puzzled his child. "Daddy!" she said reluctantly. Somehow the Major asleep, with a plump leg draped over the arm of his chair and his mouth slightly open, made up in disarming appeal what he lost in impressiveness. He was like a gray-haired little boy, tired out with playing. But, "Father!" said Joan more loudly. "Wake up, please. I've come to see you on business." He opened his eyes with a jerk. "Eh? What's that, what's that, what's that? Tut, tut! Must have dozed off. What's that?" The eyes tried to close again, but he was firm with them, and presently recognized his daughter. "That you, Dollykins? Well, well, well! Come down to pay Dad a visit, eh? That's nice, that's nice!" Suddenly he got to his feet and brought her a chair, reaching at the same time for his coat. Richard Darcy could not possibly have remained in a lady's presence coatless, no matter what the temperature. Her attention was caught by the garment into which he struggled, muttering apologies the while. "Why, Dad," she cried, "_what_ are you putting on?" It was not the immaculate gray flannel in which he had started that morning for the marts of commerce, but a thread-bare, shapeless, densely spotted garment which Joan recognized with a pang. "Your old second-best!" she exclaimed. Her father grinned a little sheepishly. "Why--why yes, I keep it here as an office coat, to save the others, you see. I'm sort of used to it," he added explanatorily. "It seems to fit into my curves. The new ones don't. One is supposed to fit into theirs!" Joan patted the sleeve of the second-best affectionately. Her eyes were moist. She felt nearer to her father than she had for weeks. He had kept the old chair out of their home equipment; he had kept the old coat. Was he after all not so obliviously content as he seemed in his fine new surroundings? Did he remember, too, and was he homesick as herself for the shabby days when he and she and her mother had made a little world of their own, happy in spite of everything? She said with a smile, "You'd better not let Effie May catch you wearing such a garment!" "Heaven forbid!" he exclaimed. "I may confess that it was with some difficulty I rescued this coat from the ashman, to whom your mother had given it."