"EXACTLY what was he doing when you last laid eyes on him?" I asked.

"He was on the train--"

"Was he alone?"

"Yes."

"Sitting?"

"No, standing. What the deuce, Minnie--"

"Waving out the window to you?"

"Of course not!" exclaimed Mr. Van Alstyne testily. "He was raising the window for a girl in the next seat."

"Precisely!" I said. "Would you know the girl well enough to trace her?"

"That's ridiculous, you know," he said trying to be polite. "Out of a thousand and one things that may have detained him--"

"Only one thing ever detains Mr. Dick, and that always detains him," I said solemnly. "That's a girl. You're a newcomer in the family, Mr. Van Alstyne; you don't remember the time he went down here to the station to see his Aunt Agnes off to the city, and we found him three weeks later in Oklahoma trying to marry a widow with five children."

Mr. Van Alstyne dropped into a chair, and through force of habit I gave him a glass of spring water.

"This was a pretty girl, too," he said dismally.

I sat down on the other side of the fireplace, and it seemed to me that father's crayon enlargement over the mantel shook its head at me.

After a minute Mr. Van Alstyne drank the water and got up.

"I'll have to tell my wife," he said. "Who's running the place, anyhow? You?"

"Not--exactly," I explained, "but, of course, when anything comes up they consult me. The housekeeper is a fool, and now that the house doctor's gone--"

"Gone! Who's looking after the patients?"

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