A crowd had sprung up in a wink; a circle of interested faces watching the unembarrassed girl apologizing to the studious-looking little man who sat so calmly upon his hat in the middle of the street.  Meantime all traffic on that side was hopelessly blocked.  Swearing truck drivers stood up on their seats from a block away to see what had halted the procession.

“But what is the object of a dog like that?” inquired the man ruminatively.  “What good is he?  What is he for?”

“Why—­why—­why,” said she, looking ready to laugh—­“he’s not a utilitarian dog at all, you see!  He’s a pleasure-dog, you know—­just a big, beautiful dog to give pleasure!—­”

“The pleasure he has given me,” said the man, gravely producing his derby from beneath him and methodically undenting it, “is negligible.  I may say non-existent.”

From somewhere rose a hoarse titter.  The girl glanced up, and for the first time became aware that her position was somewhat unconventional.  A very faint color sprang into her cheeks, but she was not the kind to retreat in disorder.  West dodged through the blockade in time to hear her say with a final, smiling bow: 

“I’m so glad you aren’t hurt, believe me ...  And if my dog has given you no pleasure, you may like to think that you have given him a great deal.”

A little flushed but not defeated, her gloved hand knotted in Behemoth’s gigantic scruff, she moved away, resigning the situation to West.  West handled it in his best manner, civilly assisting the little man to rise, and bowing himself off with the most graceful expressions of regret for the mishap.

Miss Weyland was walking slowly, waiting for him, and he fell in beside her on the sidewalk.

“Don’t speak to me suddenly,” said she, in rather a muffled voice.  “I don’t want to scream on a public street.”

“Scratch a professor and you find a Tartar,” said West, laughing too.  “When I finally caught you, laggard that I was, you looked as if he were being rude.”

Miss Weyland questioned the rudeness; she said that the man was only superbly natural.  “Thoughts came to him and he blabbed them out artlessly.  The only things that he seemed in the least interested in were his apples and Bee.  Don’t you think from this that he must be a floral and faunal naturalist?”

“No Goth, at any rate.  Did you happen to notice the tome sticking out of his coat pocket?  It was The Religion of Humanity, unless my old eyes deceived me.  Who under heaven reads Comte nowadays?”

“Not me,” said Miss Weyland.

“There’s nothing to it.  As a wealthy old friend of mine once remarked, people who read that sort of books never make over eighteen hundred a year.”

On that they turned into Saltman’s.  There much stationery and collateral stuff was bought for cash paid down, and all for the use of the Department.  Next, at a harness-store, a leash was bargained for and obtained, and Behemoth bowled over no more young men that day.  Thereafter, the two set their faces westerly till they came to the girl’s home, where the dog was delivered to the cook, and Miss Weyland went upstairs to kiss her mother.  Still later they set out northward through the lamp-lit night for the older part of town, where resided the aunt on whose behalf there was dunning to be done that night.