“We old fellows feel a little sadly, at times, how unimportant we are,” he explained. “We are grateful when Youth throws us a smile.” “Some men,” he answered. “Artists and poets. They have the woman within them. Men like myself—the mere fighter: we are incomplete in ourselves. Male and female created He them. We are lost without our mate.”!

“Oh, yes,” answered the girl. “Ever since I’ve been on my own.” “The difficulty I have always been up against,” explained her father, “has been their suspicion. ‘What’s the cunning old rascal up to now? What’s his little game?’ That is always what I have felt they were thinking to themselves whenever I have wanted to do anything for them. It isn’t anything he says to them. It seems to be just he, himself.”

“I felt a bit afraid of her,” laughed Joan, “so I made her promise not to part with it. Is he really very ill, her husband?” Joan was alone again for a while. A handsome girl, with her hair cut short and parted at the side, was discussing diseases of the spine with a curly-headed young man in a velvet suit. The gentleman was describing some of the effects in detail. Joan felt there was danger of her being taken ill if she listened any longer; and seeing Madge’s brother near the door, and unoccupied, she made her way across to him. “Men stand more in awe of a well-dressed woman than they do even of a beautiful woman,” Madge was of opinion. “If you go into an office looking dowdy they’ll beat you down. Tell them the price they are offering you won’t keep you in gloves for a week and they’ll be ashamed of themselves. There’s nothing infra dig. in being mean to the poor; but not to sympathize with the rich stamps you as middle class.” She laughed.