She nodded.  “Do you think we’d better go down to the Parchers’?  We’d just say we came to call, of course, and if—­”

“Get your hat on,” he said.  “I don’t think there’s anything in it at all, but we’d just as well drop down there.  It can’t hurt anything.”

“Of course, I don’t think—­” she began.

“Neither do I,” he interrupted, irascibly.  “But with a boy of his age crazy enough to think he’s in love, how do we know what ’ll happen?  We’re only his parents!  Get your hat on.”

But when the uneasy couple found themselves upon the pavement before the house of the Parchers, they paused under the shade-trees in the darkness, and presently decided that it was not necessary to go in.  Suddenly their uneasiness had fallen from them.  From the porch came the laughter of several young voices, and then one silvery voice, which pretended to be that of a tiny child.

“Oh, s’ame!  S’ame on ‘oo, big Bruvva Josie-Joe!  Mus’ be polite to Johnny Jump-up, or tant play wiv May and Lola!”

“That’s Miss Pratt,” whispered Mrs. Baxter.  “She’s talking to Johnnie Watson and Joe Bullitt and May Parcher.  Let’s go home; it’s all right.  Of course I knew it would be.”

“Why, certainly,” said Mr. Baxter, as they turned.  “Even if Willie were as crazy as that, the little girl would have more sense.  I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, if you hadn’t told me about the suit-case.  That looked sort of queer.”

She agreed that it did, but immediately added that she had thought nothing of it.  What had seemed more significant to her was William’s interest in the early marriage of Genesis’s father, and in the Iowa beard story, she said.  Then she said that it was curious about the suit-case.

And when they came to their own house again, there was William sitting alone and silent upon the steps of the porch.

“I thought you’d gone out, Willie,” said his mother, as they paused beside him.

“Ma’am?”

“Adelia said you went out, carrying your suit-case.”

“Oh yes,” he said, languidly.  “If you leave clothes at Schwartz’s in the evening they have ’em pressed in the morning.  You said I looked damp at dinner, so I took ’em over and left ’em there.”

“I see.”  Mrs. Baxter followed her husband to the door, but she stopped on the threshold and called back: 

“Don’t sit there too long, Willie.”

“Ma’am?”

“The dew is falling and it rained so hard to-day—­I’m afraid it might be damp.”

“Ma’am?”

“Come on,” Mr. Baxter said to his wife.  “He’s down on the Parchers’ porch, not out in front here.  Of course he can’t hear you.  It’s three blocks and a half.”