He said good night absent-mindedly.  Grover laughed and walked away to meet Ruth and her brother, who, with Barbara dancing ahead, were coming along the sidewalk.  He had gone but a little way when he heard Mr. Winslow shouting his name.

“Major!” shouted Jed.  “Major Grover!  It’s all right, Major, I feel better now.  I’ve found it.  ’Twas the key.  I left it in the front door lock here when I went away this mornin’.  I guess there’s nothin’ unnatural about me, after all; guess nothin’s goin’ to happen.”

But something did and almost immediately.  Jed, entering the outer shop, closed the door and blundered on through that apartment and the little shop adjoining until he came to his living-room beyond.  Then he fumbled about in the darkness for a lamp and matchbox.  He found the latter first, on the table where the lamp should have been.  Lighting one of the matches, he then found the lamp on a chair directly in front of the door, where he had put it before going away that morning, his idea in so doing being that it would thus be easier to locate when he returned at night.  Thanking his lucky stars that he had not upset both chair and lamp in his prowlings, Mr. Winslow lighted the latter.  Then, with it in his hand, he turned, to see the very man he and Major Grover had just been discussing seated in the rocker in the corner of the room and glaring at him malevolently.

Naturally, Jed was surprised.  Naturally, also, being himself, he showed his surprise in his own peculiar way.  He did not start violently, nor utter an exclamation.  Instead he stood stock still, returning Phineas Babbitt’s glare with a steady, unwinking gaze.

It was the hardware dealer who spoke first.  And that, by the way, was precisely what he had not meant to do.

“Yes,” he observed, with caustic sarcasm, “it’s me.  You needn’t stand there blinkin’ like a fool any longer, Shavin’s.  It’s me.”

Jed set the lamp upon the table.  He drew a long breath, apparently of relief.

“Why, so ‘tis,” he said, solemnly.  “When I first saw you sittin’ there, Phin, I had a suspicion ’twas you, but the longer I looked the more I thought ’twas the President come to call.  Do you know,” he added, confidentially, “if you didn’t have any whiskers and he looked like you you’d be the very image of him.”

This interesting piece of information was not received with enthusiasm.  Mr. Babbitt’s sense of humor was not acutely developed.

“Never mind the funny business, Shavin’s,” he snapped.  “I didn’t come here to be funny to-night.  Do you know why I came here to talk to you?”

Jed pulled forward a chair and sat down.

“I presume likely you came here because you found the door unlocked, Phin,” he said.

“I didn’t say how I came to come, but why I came.  I knew where you was this afternoon.  I see you when you left there and I had a good mind to cross over and say what I had to say before the whole crew, Sam Hunniwell, and his stuck-up rattle-head of a daughter, and that Armstrong bunch that think themselves so uppish, and all of ’em.”