"Naughty! Naughty!" reflected Kerns, pensively assaulting the breakfast food. "Lovey must _not_ worry; Dovey shall be found, and all will be joy and gingerbread. . . . If you throw that orange I'll run screaming to the governors. Aren't you ashamed--just because you're in a love tantrum!"

"One more word and you get it!"

"May I sing as I trifle with this frugal fare, dear friend? My heart is _so_ happy that I should love to warble a few wild notes--"

He paused to watch his badgered victim dispose of a Martini.

"I wonder," he mused, "if you'd like me to tell you what a cocktail before breakfast does to the lining of your stomach? Would you?"

"No. I suppose it's what the laundress does to my linen. What do I care?"

_Don't_ be a short sport, Jack."

"Well, I don't care for the game you put me up against. Do you know what has happened?"

"I really don't, dear friend. The Tracer of Lost Persons has not found her--_has_ he?"

"He says he has," retorted Gatewood sullenly, pulling a crumpled telegram from his pocket and casting it upon the table. "I don't want to see her; I'm not interested. I never saw but one girl in my life who interested me in the slightest; and she's employed to help in this ridiculous search."

Kerns, meanwhile, had smoothed out the telegram and was intently perusing it: "_John Gatewood, Lenox Club, Fifth Avenue:_ "Person probably discovered. Call here as soon as possible. W. KEEN."

"What do you make of that?" demanded Gatewood hoarsely.

Make of it? Why, it's true enough, I fancy. Go and see, and if it's she, be hers!"

"I won't! I don't want to see any ideal! I don't want to marry. Why do you try to make me marry somebody?"

"Because it's good for you, dear friend. Otherwise you'll go to the doggy-dogs. You don't realize how much worry you are to me."

"Confound it! Why don't _you_ marry? Why didn't I ask you that when you put me up to all this foolishness? What right have you to--"

"Tut, friend! _I_ know there's no woman alive fit to wed me and spend 

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