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 crawled out under the tent. By this time he has amalgamated himself with half the delicatessen truck in town.’

“‘You mean Ed Collier?’ says Mame.

“‘I do,’ I answers; ‘and a pity it is that he has gone back to crime again. I met him outside the tent, and he exposed his intentions of devastating the food crop of the world. ’Tis enormously sad when one’s ideal descends from his pedestal to make a seventeen-year locust of himself.’

“Mame looked me straight in the eye until she had corkscrewed my reflections.

“‘Jeff,’ says she, ‘it isn’t quite like you to talk that way. I don’t care to hear Ed Collier ridiculed. A man may do ridiculous things, but they don’t look ridiculous to the girl he does ’em for. That was one man in a hundred. He stopped eating just to please me. I’d be hard-hearted and ungrateful if I didn’t feel kindly toward him. Could you do what he did?’

“‘I know,’ says I, seeing the point, ‘I’m condemned. I can’t help it. The brand of the consumer is upon my brow. Mrs. Eve settled that business for me when she made the dicker with the snake. I fell from the fire into the frying-pan. I guess I’m the Champion Feaster of the Universe.’ I spoke humble, and Mame mollified herself a little.

“‘Ed Collier and I are good friends,’ she said, ‘the same as me and you. I gave him the same answer I did you—no marrying for me. I liked to be with