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“If you don’t stop callin’ me Hawkshaw, I’ll–“

“I apologize. An acute case of lapsus lingua, Mr. Crow. But wasn’t that remark significant?”

“I am a friend of Mrs. Nixon’s, an’ I must decline to criticize her beds,” said Mr. Crow rather loftily. “I ain’t ever slept in one of ’em, but I’d do it any time before I’d set up all night.”

“Granting that the bed was all right, then isn’t it pretty clear that she was referring to something else? The veil, for instance?”

“Sounds reasonable,” said Newt Spratt, and then, after due reflection,–“mighty reasonable.”

“I’d hate to sleep in a veil,” said Alf Reesling. “It’s bad enough to try to sleep with a mustard poultice on your jaw, like I did last winter when I had that bad toothache. Doc Ellis says he never pulled a bigger er a stubborner tooth in all his experience than–“

“I think you ought to investigate the Veiled Lady of Nixon Cottage,” said Harry Squires, lowering his voice and glancing over his shoulder. “You can’t tell what she’s up to, Anderson. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’s a woman with a past. She may be using that veil as a disguise. What’s more, there may be a price on her head. The country is full of these female spies, working tooth and nail for Germany. Suppose she should turn out to be that society woman the New York papers say the Secret Service men are chasing all over the country and can’t find–the Baroness von Slipernitz.”

“What fer kind of a dog is that you got, Ed?” inquired Mr. Crow, calmly ignoring the suggestion.

Mr. Higgins’ new dog was enjoying a short nap in the middle of the sidewalk, after an apparently fatiguing effort to dislodge something in the neighbourhood of his left ear.

“Well,” began Ed, eyeing the dog doubtfully, “all I know about him is that he’s a black dog. My wife has been sizin’ him up for a day or two, figgerin’ on having him clipped here and there to see if he can’t be made to look as respectable as that dog of Mrs. Smith. Hetty Adams has clipped that Newfoundland dog of hers. Changed him something terrible. When I come across them on the street today, I declare I only recognized half of him–an’ I wouldn’t have recognized that much if he hadn’t wagged it at me. It beats all what women will do to keep up with the styles.”

“I seen him today,” said Mr. Spratt, “an’ I never in all my life see a dog that looked so mortified. I says to Hetty, says I: ‘In the name o’ Heaven, Hetty,’ says I, ‘what you been doin’ to Shep?’ An’ she says: ‘I’d thank you, Newt Spratt, not to call my dog Shep. His name is Edgar.’ So I says to Shep: ‘Come here, Edgar–that’s a good dog.’ An’ he never moved. Then I says: ‘Hyah, Shep!’ an’ he almost jumped out of his hide, he was so happy to find somebody that knowed who he was. ‘Edgar, your granny!’ says I to Hetty. ‘What’s the use of ruinin’ a good dog by calling him Edgar?’ An’ Hetty says: ‘Come here, Edgar! Come here, I say!’ But Edgar, he never paid any attention to her. He just kep’ on tryin’ to lick my hand, an’ so she hit him a clip with her parysol an’ says: ‘Edgar, must I speak to you again? Come here, I say! Behave like a gentleman!’ ‘There ain’t no dog livin’ that’s goin’ to behave like a gentleman if you call him names like that,’ says I. ‘It ain’t human nature,’ says I. An’ just to prove it to her, I turned an’ says to Shep: ‘Ain’t that so, Shep, old sport?’ An’ what do you think that poor old dog done? He got right up on his hind legs and tried to kiss me.”

“No wonder she wants to call him Edgar,” said Harry Squires. “That’s just the kind of thing an Edgar sort of dog would do.”