“Oh, if boys could only be girls!”

Herbert just looked at her.

“The worst thing,” said his father;—­“that is, if there’s any part of it that’s worse than another—­the worst thing about it all is this rumour about Noble Dill.”

“What about that poor thing?” Aunt Harriet asked.  “We haven’t heard.”

“Why, I walked up from downtown with old man Dill,” said Mr. Atwater, “and the Dill family are all very much worried.  It seems that Noble started downtown after lunch, as usual, and pretty soon he came back to the house and he had a copy of this awful paper that little Florence had given him, and——­”

“Who gave it to him?” Aunt Fanny asked. “Who?”

“Little Florence.”

“Why, that’s curious,” Cousin Virginia murmured.  “I must telephone and ask her mother about that.”

The brooding Herbert looked up, and there was a gleam in his dogged eye; but he said nothing.

“Go on,” Aunt Harriet urged.  “What did Noble do?”

“Why, his mother said he just went up to his room and changed his shoes and necktie——­”

“I thought so,” Aunt Fanny whispered.  “Crazy!”

“And then,” Mr. Atwater continued, “he left the house and she supposed he’d gone down to the office; but she was uneasy, and telephoned his father.  Noble hadn’t come.  He didn’t come all afternoon, and he didn’t go back to the house; and they telephoned around to every place he could go that they know of, and they couldn’t find him or hear anything about him at all—­not anywhere.”  Mr. Atwater coughed, and paused.

“But what,” Aunt Harriet cried;—­“what do they think’s become of him?”

“Old man Dill said they were all pretty anxious,” said Mr. Atwater.  “They’re afraid Noble has—­they’re afraid he’s disappeared.”

Aunt Fanny screamed.

Then, in perfect accord, they all turned to look at Herbert, who rose and would have retired upstairs had he been permitted.

As that perturbing evening wore on, word gradually reached the most outlying members of the Atwater family connection that Noble Dill was missing.  Ordinarily, this bit of news would have caused them no severe anxiety.  Noble’s person and intellect were so commonplace—­“insignificant” was the term usually preferred in his own circle—­that he was considered to be as nearly negligible as it is charitable to consider a fellow-being.  True, there was one thing that set him apart; he was found worthy of a superlative when he fell in love with Julia; and of course this distinction caused him to become better known and more talked about than he had been in his earlier youth.