The last of the parade went by; the dense crowd broke and overran the street; and Queed stood upon the bottom step taking his leave of Miss Weyland.  Much interested, he had lingered till the other guests were gone; and now there was nobody upon the porch but Miss Weyland’s mother and grandmother, who sat at the further end of it, the eyes of both, did Mr. Queed but know it, upon him.

“Why don’t you come to see me sometimes?” the daughter and granddaughter was saying sweetly.  “I think you will have to come now, for this was a party, and a party calls for a party-call.  Oh, can you make as clever a pun as that?”

“Thank you—­but I never pay calls.”

“Oh, but you are beginning to do a good many things that you never did before.”

“Yes,” he answered with curious depression.  “I am.”

“Well, don’t look so glum about it.  You mustn’t think that any change in your ways of doing is necessarily for the worse!”

He refused to take up the cudgels; an uncanny thing from him.  “Well!  I am obliged to you for inviting me here to-day.  It has been interesting and—­instructive.”

“And now you have got us all neatly docketed on your sociological operating table, I suppose?”

“I am inclined to think,” he said slowly, “that it is you who have got me on the operating table again.”

He gave her a quick glance, at once the unhappiest and the most human look that she had ever seen upon his face.

“No,” said she, gently,—­“if you are on the table, you have put yourself there this time.”

“Well, good-by—­”

“And are you coming to see me—­to pay your party-call?”

“Why should I?  What is the point of these conventions—­these little rules—?”

“Don’t you like being with me?  Don’t you get a great deal of pleasure from my society?”

“I have never asked myself such a question.”

He was gazing at her for a third time; and a startled look sprang suddenly into his eyes.  It was plain that he was asking himself such a question now.  A curious change passed over his face; a kind of dawning consciousness which, it was obvious, embarrassed him to the point of torture, while he resolutely declined to flinch at it.

“Yes—­I get pleasure from your society.”

The admission turned him rather white, but he saved himself by instantly flinging at her:  “However, I am no hedonist.”

Sharlee retired to look up hedonist in the dictionary.

* * * * *

Later that evening, Mrs. Weyland and her daughter being together upstairs, the former said:—­

“Sharlee, who is this Mr. Queed that you paid so much attention to on the porch this evening?”

“Why, don’t you know, mother?  He is the assistant editor of the Post, and is going to be editor just the minute Mr. West retires.  For you see, mother, everybody says that he writes the most wonderful articles, although I assure you, a year ago—­”