“What did he say?”

“Well, he said it was the picture of an empty-faced society girl.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed.

“I—­I maintained there were possibilities in the face.”  He put both hands on the table, and, bending forward, looked down at me.  “Well, I was a fool, I admit.  I said your eyes were kind and candid, in spite of that haughty mouth.  You see, I said I was a fool.”

“I think you are exceedingly rude,” I managed finally.  “If you want to know where I found your watch, it was down in the coal cellar.  And if you admit you are an idiot, I am not.  I—­I know all about Bella’s bracelet—­and the board on the roof, and—­oh, if you would only leave—­Anne’s necklace—­on the coal, or somewhere—­and get away—­”

My voice got beyond me then, and I dropped into a chair and covered my face.  I could feel him staring at the back of my head.

“Well, I’ll be—­” something or other, he said finally, and then he turned on his heel and went out.  By the time I got my eyes dry (yes, I was crying; I always do when I am angry) I heard Jim coming downstairs, and I tucked the watch out of sight.  Would anyone have foreseen the trouble that watch would make!

Jim was sulky.  He dropped into a chair and stretched out his legs, looking gloomily at nothing.  Then he got up and ambled into his den, closing the door behind him without having spoken a word.  It was more than human nature could stand.

When I went into the den he was stretched on the davenport with his face buried in the cushions.  He looked absolutely wilted, and every line of him was drooping.

“Go on out, Kit,” he said, in a smothered voice.  “Be a good girl and don’t follow me around.”

“You are shameless!” I gasped.  “Follow you!  When you are hung around my neck like a—­like a—­” Millstone was what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t think of it.

He turned over and looked up from his cushions like an ill-treated and suffering cherub.

“I’m done for, Kit,” he groaned.  “Bella went up to the studio after we left, and investigated that corner.”

“What did she find?  The necklace?” I asked eagerly.  He was too wretched to notice this.

“No, that picture of you that I did last winter.  She is crazy—­she says she is going upstairs and sit in Takahiro’s room and take smallpox and die.”

“Fiddlesticks!” I said rudely, and somebody hammered on the door and opened it.

“Pardon me for disturbing you,” Bella said, in her best dear-me-I’m-glad-I-knocked manner.  “But—­Flannigan says the dinner has not come.”

“Good Lord!” Jim exclaimed.  “I forgot to order the confounded dinner!”

It was eight o’clock by that time, and as it took an hour at least after telephoning the order, everybody looked blank when they heard.  The entire family, except Mr. Harbison, who had not appeared again, escorted Jim to the telephone and hung around hungrily, suggesting new dishes every minute.  And then—­he couldn’t raise Central.  It was fifteen minutes before we gave up, and stood staring at one another despairingly.