Doctor Jones dropped his head on his hands and murmured something that sounded like “Eleanor, Eleanor!” Then he looked up with one of the most radiant smiles I ever saw on a man’s face.  “I hope I’m not presuming on a very short acquaintance,” he said, “but the fact is—­why should I not tell you?—­Miss Van Coort was the woman in my life!”

I explained to him that Freddy was the woman in mine.

Then you ought to have seen us fraternize!

In twenty minutes I had him almost convinced that Eleanor had loved him all these years.  But he worried a lot about a Mr. Wise who had been on the same train, and a certain Colonel Hadow who had also paid Eleanor attention.  Jones was a great fellow for wanting to be sure.  I pooh-poohed them out of the way and gave him the open track.  Then, indeed, the clouds rolled away.  He beamed with joy.  In his rich gush of friendship he recurred to the subject of my insomnia with a new-born enthusiasm.  He subdivided all my symptoms.  He dived again into my physical being.  He consulted German authorities.  I squirmed and lied and resisted all I could, but he said he owed me an eternal debt that could only be liquidated by an absolute cure.  He wanted to tie me up and shoot me with an X-ray.  He ordered me to wear white socks.  He had a long, terrifying look at a drop of my blood.  He jerked hairs out of my head to sample my nerve force.  He said I was a baffling subject, but that he meant to make me well if it took the last shot in the scientific locker.  And he wound up at last by refusing point-blank to be paid a cent!

I waltzed away on air to write an account of the whole affair to Freddy, and dictate a plan of operations.  I was justified in feeling proud of myself.  Most men would have tamely submitted to their fate instead of chasing up all the Joneses of Jonesville!  Freddy sent me an early answer—­a gay, happy, overflowing little note—­telling me to try and engage Doctor Jones for a three-day house-party at Morristown.  I was to telegraph when he could come, and was promised an official invitation from Mrs. Matthewman. (She was the aunt, you know, that they lived with —­one of those old porcelain ladies with a lace cap and a rent-roll.) However, I could not do anything for two days, for we had reached a crisis in the labor troubles, and matters were approaching the breaking point.  We were threatened with one of those “sympathetic” strikes that drive business men crazy.  There was no question at issue between ourselves and our employees; but the thing ramified off somewhere to the sugar vacuum-boiler riveters’ union.  Finally the S.Y.B.R.U. came to a settlement with their bosses, and peace was permitted to descend on Hodge & Westoby’s.