Then Mr. Cane listened for a long time chuckling softly. At last he said:
"Well, don't operate, doctor! I've found your poison!"
"——"
CHAPTER XXII
A SECOND-HAND WAR BABY
Sube Cane had never heard life defined as just one certain kind of thing after another, but he knew that it was so; for so he had found it. And, when, a few days after the final performance of Ten Knights in a Barroom, he had turned the house upside down hunting for his Wild West hat only to learn that his mother had given it away a few days before, he felt the tragedy of existence as never before.
"Gave it away!" he gasped in stricken tones. "What'd you do that for?"
"Why, I had no idea that you wanted it," she replied; "it was always lying around in the way. You never wore it, and besides, it had a great hole through it."