"No impudence, now!" says he. "Where did they come from?"

"Off'm Grant's Tomb, if I must guess," says I. "Anyway, I wouldn't think they was picked in the Subway."

And at this Old Hickory sniffs impatient. "That is quite enough comic diversion, young man!" he puts in. "Do you or don't you know anything about how those things happened to get on my desk?"

"Me?" says I. "Why, I never saw 'em before! What's the dope?"

"Huh!" he grunts. "I didn't think this was any of your nonsense: too tame. And I suppose you might as well know what's afoot. Tell him, Mr. Piddie."

Did you ever see a pinhead but what just dotes on springin' a sensation? Piddie fairly gloats over unloadin' it. "This," says he, holdin' up the wilted bunch, "is the unaccountable. For the fourth time flowers of this description have been mysteriously left on Mr. Ellins' desk. It is not done after hours, or during the night; but in broad day, sometimes when Mr. Ellins is sitting just where he is now, and by a hand unseen. Watch has been kept, yet no one has been detected; and, as you know, only a few persons have free access here. Still the thing continues. At regular periods these absurd bouquets appear on this desk, seemingly from nowhere at all. Hence this inquiry."

I'd heard Piddie spout a good many times before, but never quite so eloquent, and I expect I was gawpin' at him some dazed and admirin'.

"Well," says Old Hickory, squintin' sharp at me from under his bushy eyebrows, "what have you to offer?"

"It's by me," says I, shruggin' my shoulders.

"Oh, come now!" he goes on. "With that high tension brain of yours, surely you can advance some idea."

"Why," says I, "offhand I should say that some of them mushy lady typists out there might be smugglin' in floral tributes to you, Sir."

Old Hickory grins sarcastic. "Without going into the question of motive," says he, "that suggestion may be worth considering. What say, Mr. Piddie?"

"It might be that Miss Smicks," says Piddie. "She's quite sentimental, Sir, and I've thought at times she----"

"Stop!" roars Old Hickory, almost workin' up a blush. "Mr. Piddie, I am a fat, cross-grained old man, about as attractive personally as a hippopotamus. Great 

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