HE was such a demure little creature. Sobriety had marked her for his own, while her limpid blue eyes were twin founts of sincerity. And she was so fragile. On the street, the casual passerby turned for a second look, likening her to a little lost angel or an embryonic St. Cecelia. And well he might, so evanescent did she appear—a delicate dewdrop, ready to vanish with the first stray sunbeam. At school, she was a paragon, astonishing the instructors with her insatiable thirst for knowledge. Her playmates looked up to her with certain vague awe, suspending ruder sorts of play when she came among them; while the rowdiest boy, after five minutes in her presence, was reduced to a forced silence, verging very close to a condition of frozen idiocy.

And she was grown up, having drifted, years before her time, from the nursery to her mother's tea table. There she dabbled in the stereotyped conventionalities and unctious nothings, till her mother's feminine visitors were petrified at her precocity. The ordinary gossip and petty scandal of such circles were dropped on her appearance, the conversation leaping to the opposite extreme, and the atmosphere she radiated had a most wonderful effect on such visitors as happened to be of the masculine gender. Old General Wetherbee visibly trembeled whenever he took her hands in his, and stooping, gazed into her saintly eyes. Spiteful people intimated approaching palsy, but this must not be credited; for did he not yield to her gentle missionary efforts, and forswear and abjure, for all time, the solace of his Havana. And did he not keep his word, incidentally enduring the tortures of the damned?

In short, Mabel Armitage, for all her twelve years, was taken seriously and correspondingly stirred all who knew her. She seemed too delicate, too good, too angelic, for this world. She was an apotheosis of all that was best, a radiant, celestial creature—one who would have surprised no one, had she followed in the footsteps of Elijah and taken her rightful seat among the elect. Even Cap Drake, intimate with her from birth, believed this; which goes to show how little knowledge of our fellow beings may penetrate our understandings.

Her father was possessed of numerous minute wrinkles at the corner of either eye. It may have been because of this, and it might have been due to the innate perversity of things; but deep down in this innocent child's heart there lived a devil—a devil which sometimes issued forth, and under divers guises, perturbed men's souls greatly.

Now, Cap Drake was numbered among her most devoted subjects, serving as prime minister to her in a sort of unofficial way. He happened to be possessed of a vast erudition, and she ahd also constituted him he final court of appeal, referring to him they myriad debatable questions which constantly arose in her pursuit of knowledge. her brother Bobbie, who had appeared before this court at various times, seditiously and openly proclaimed collusion between the queen and the chief magistrate; others held that he but loyally bent to her imperial ukase; but be this as it may, one thing was certain—Cap Drake never had known to render a verdict which did not doubly fortify her position or throw her assailants into utter confusion. In thus conniving at her many victories, he often found himself hard put; he then had recourse to the most amazing sophistries, weaving a mesh of audacious fallacy which so paralyzed their understandings that they always capitualted on the spot.

But this really pardonable lapse from the straight and narrow path bred in Cap Drake a consequent infirmity. He grew able to tell the most astounding whoopers, with an unfaltering tongue, and a face which fairly shone with genial sincerity. All well and good, till one day, yielding to a traitorous impulse, he confided to the queen certain zoological wonders, yet unklnown to science, whose habitat was the unexplored jungle-land of Africa. Still well and good, had not the trusting Mabel proceeded to electrify both her class and teacher with the lurid tale. Its Munchausen-like simplicity and earnestness took them aback, and they pleaded for further information. Mabel keenly felt the atmosphere of suspended judgment, and vouched for the authority, though loyally withholding that authority's name; for she had begun to fear her faithful prime minister had imposed upon her. And when she went home that afternoon, sadder and wiser, it was with the laudable intention of bringing about, in some way, her erring servant's discomfiture.

Cap Drake came for an early tea, feeling very much at peace with himnself and the world in general. Looking into the library, he found Mabel deep in her composition book, and refrained from the customary quiz on the little happenings of the day, Later, at table, the converstaion turned upon national banners, and he found himself, as usual, officiating as the final court of appeal.

"But Mabel," Bobby blurted out, "you're wrong, way wrong. There's only one Union, isn't there? The American Union, you know, and that's why the Union Jack's an American flag."

"Isn't the Union Jack the flag of the English, Cappy?" Mabel appealed.

"Why yes, Mabel, it is. It stands for the United Kingdom, the Union, as Bobbie calls it, of England, Ireland, and Scotland. Yes, Mabel, you're right."

"And what do the stripes mean?" asked Mabel.

"The stripes? Let me see—. Now the stars stand for the number of states, don't they?" he was maneuvering for time, and inwardly wondering what they did mean.

Mabel acquiesced silently.

"And for every state that's added, another star is placed in the blue field."

Again Mabel nodded.

"And how many states are there?"

"Forty-four," she volunteered.

"No; forty-five," asserted Bobbie.

"Look here, Sis; there's Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont—"

Cap Drake withdrew from the controversy in haste, congratulating himself upon his cleverness; and during the rest of the tea he talked politics most assiduously with Mr. Armitage. Of course, there could be no interrupting, but Mable had found her cue, and an hour later she capture him with his cigar on the veranda.

"What do the stripes mean, Cappy?"

"The stripes? Oh, yes, we were talking about flags, weren't we? Which reminds me of the banner we captured on the Little Round Top. It was very amusing, and—"

And he proceeded to spin out wartime reminiscences till twilight came on, and they went within. Mabel was in no hurry, however, while he forgot it all in a rubber of cribbage. But the corner wrinkles of Mr. Armitage's eyes had become more manifest, and though Mabel did not know, he was taking huge interest in the proceedings. And the rubber could not last all evening.

"Cappy, what do the stripes mean?"

The deuce take it, that question again! Such a little thing—surely he had learned and forgotten it years ago. How annoying! And Mabel was such a hyper-sensitive little creature, with such an insatiable appetite for facts—why, she was liable to worry herself sick over it. Yet he must crawl out somehow. He cast a helpless glance in the direction of Mr. Armitage; but that gentleman was deeply engrossed in what was evidently a very amusing magazine article. Mrs. Armitage was busy resurrecting old favorites from amongst a great mass of sheet music.

"The stripes?"

Cap Drake gazed at her so absently and so long, that Mabel felt it incumbent upon her to repeat the question.

"Oh! now I remember!" he cried, his face brightening up hypocritically. "Flags, wasn't it? Come over on the sofa and I'll tell you all about it. It's a deep subject, a very deep subject." he shook his head profoundly. "In the old Roman Republic, before Christ, you know, the soldiers used to carry a handful of hay on the end of a pole. And before that, the soldier who slew Cyrus, the great Persian king, was highly honored when his comrades allowed him to carry a golden cock at the head of the army. Thus, you see, there were no real banners in those days, but—"

And in this wise, Cap Drake proceeded, mopping his perspiring forhead and racking his brain for more data upon the detestable subject. Mabel did not interrupt; but he saw her azure eyes fixed upon him in mute approach, and he could have sworn she was ready for tears.

"But, Cappy, the stripes?" she interjected, softly, once, and thereat he plunged into a description of the flags borne by the knights of William the Conqueror, as portrayed in the Bayeux tapestry. After exhausting that he took up the oriflamme of France, and from there to the fleurs-de-lis, regained his scattered wits by relating a long legend of the days of chivalry. As he described the blue imperial standard, with its yellow eagle and golden bees, he managed to get to his feet, and with the tricolor of the Revolution he gained the door.

"Why so early?" asked Mrs. Armitage. "I'll sing the 'Garden of Sleep' if you stay, and you know you'll forego anything for the sake of that."

"No, I'd rather not, thank you. A slight headache to-night, and—" He paused almost in terror as his eyes fell on Mable, and saw her lips beginning to form "The stripes, Cappy?" and he said good-night very abruptly and hurried down the hall. Instead of going to his room he stole to the library, where he did contract a headache in an hour of bootless rummaging. He discovered two atlases which contained color-symphonies of the flags of all nations, but not a line could he find on the subject in hand. A reference to the encyclopaedia developed the fact that the one volume which was sure to hold the secret, "Dan-Fra" was missing. Then he went to bed.

"Cappy! O Cappy!"

Mabel knelt before his door, having floated down the hallway more angel-like than ever in her snowy nightdress, her delicate face framed in an aureole of unbound gold. Mr. Armitage had ensconced himself in the curtained oriel at the head of the stairs.

It was a very timid little knock, and there was a pitiful quaver to her voice. Cap Drake groaned and sat up.

"Won't you tell me what the stripes mean, Cappy? Oh, won't you tell me, Cappy? I've tried ever so hard, but I can't go to bed till I know."

"The stripes?"—in muffled syllables from the further side of the door. "Hadn't you better go back to bed?"

"Tell me, Cappy, and then I will. It bothers me so I can't go to sleep till you tell me."

"Well—er—really, I don't know." Having at last taken the bull by the horns he felt somewhat relieved. At least no more circumlocution was necessary.

"I'll never believe it, Cappy: no, never!"

"Perhaps they have no meaning?"

"Yes they have. I know they have, and so do you. And you just won't tell me, and I think you're too mean for anything—there, now!"

"But, Mabel, I tell you I don't know. I'd tell you if I did—you know I would but I honestly don't. I'll find out to-morrow for you. Now go down-stairs, there's a good girl."

"O Cappy, don't be cruel. I—I'm going to cry."

Cap Drake bespoke his agony in certain intensive adjectives, unmentionable and shocking, save in the mouths of pious divines. But he smothered them deep down in his larynx and resolutely shut his lips. Then the heavy silence of the night settled down upon them, broken by disconsolate sobs and pathetic chokings from Mabel's side of the door. There was also suppressed laughter from the direction of the oriel; but Cap Drake did not hear that.

A long silence.

He wonders if she has gone, and ventures "Good-night, Mabel."

She responds with a miserable little wail.

He has recourse to more intensive adjectives, strikes a light and begins to dress.

He opened the door cautiously and saw at his feet the woeful little creature, in rumpled white, sobbing convulsively. There had been a great deal of the woman born into Cap Drake, and, though he was now jogging down the shadowy slope of life in single blessedness, it had never been stunted nor held back in its growth as is the case with most men similarly circumstanced. So he took her into his arms, in much the same way he had done a memorable twelve years agone, and carried her down-stairs to the nursery. And there he soothed her, and held her hand in his till midnight chimed and her honest blue eyes were veiled in slumber. The he softly kissed the saintly forehead and went upstairs, feeling somewhat soothed, yet deeming himself very much of a brute.

The next day when Mr. Lennon, the head bookkeeper, in response to Cap Drake's call stepped into the inner office, he expected nothing less than a consultation on an important business interest then at issue. A glance at his employer's clouded countenance convinced him that this was so.

"Mr. Lennon, do you happen to—a—"

Mr. Lennon shaped his austere features into their best judicial expression. It must, indeed, be important,

"Mr. Lennon, do you—I say, what do the stripes mean, any way?"

To his everlasting credit, the bookkeeper relaxed never a muscle, but, as he afterward confided to the copying clerk, "You could have knocked me over with a feather."

"The stripes, sir? I hardly understand." At the same time a haunting suspicion crossed his mind that it was one of those new-fangled business college notions introduced by his latest assistant.

"The stripes in the American flag?"

"Oh! Well, the stars mean—"

"Dash the stars! The stripes, man! the stripes!"

But whatever recollection—if recollection he ever had—was dissipated by his employer's purple forehead, and he respired in a relieved sort of way when he regained the cooler atmosphere of the counting-room. Then the first-assistant was called in, and finally, when the establishment was exhausted, the office boy was dispatched on a mission to Judge Parker's office, and the typewriter detailed to finish the morning, and if needs be, the day, in the reference department of the near-by library.

Cap Drake took a much earlier train home than was his wont on Saturday afternoons, armed with a huge bunch of violets, and the solution of that most momentous of problems—the significance of the stripes in the American banner. Mabel was not personally in evidence, but she apparently had just come in, for her school books lay upon the reading stand in the library. Among other things, he had taken it upon himself to be her literary mentor; so he at once buried himself in her composition book, pausing with a start at her most recent production. It was very interesting; he skimmed down the page without noticing her entry, and when the bunch of violets had fallen to the floor, read on regardless.

He gasped in an apoplectic manner as he turned the page and read: "The United States flag has silver stars on a blue field, and red stripes on a white ground. For every state a star is added. The number of stripes never change. There are thirteen stripes, counting the white ones, too. And there were thirteen original states—"

He looked up and saw her for the first time. "When did you write this?" he asked.

Her blue eyes, with their usual expression of wondering innocence, never faltered. "Yesterday. Don't you remember when you came into the library and saw how busy I was? And Miss Storrs said it was excellent, and made me read it out before all the class, and—"

But Cap Drake never heard. He was at the telephone endeavoring to get the switch on Red 17.

"Anywhere to-night?" he asked her, while waiting on Central's pleasure.

Mabel shook her head, her wide-eyed wonder deepening.

"Well, you're going with me."

"That's all right," he added. "I'll fix it with your mother."

"Red 17?—Yes—How are the box seats?—Yes—Two—yes; t, w, o, two—All right—thank you."