"This" was a flat-brimmed hat of the Paris boulevards, the father of all stovepipe hats, dear to the Frenchman's heart.
"Candidly, now," said I with a bit of excusable impatience, "do I look like a man who would wear a hat like that?"
He surveyed me miserably through his eye-glasses.
"No, I can't say that you do. But what in the world am I to do?" He mopped his brow in the ecstasy of anguish. "The hat must be found. The legal papers could be replaced, but.... You see, sir, that boy put a private letter of his sister's in the band of that hat, and it must be recovered at all hazards."
"I am very sorry, sir."
"But what shall I do?"
"I do not see what can be done save for you to leave word at the café. The Frenchman is doubtless a frequenter, and may easily be found. If you had come a few moments sooner...."
With a gurgle of dismay he fled, leaving me with a half-finished sentence hanging on my lips and the Frenchman's chapeau hanging on my fingers. And my hat; where was my hat? (I may as well add here, in parenthesis, that the disappearance of my eight-dollar hat still remains a mystery. I have had to buy a new one.)
So the boy had put a letter of his sister's in the band of the hat, I mused. How like her kid brother! It seemed that more or less families had Toddy-One-Boys to look after. Pshaw! what a muddle because a man couldn't keep his thoughts from wool-gathering!
Well, here I had two hats, neither of which was mine. I could, at a pinch, wear the opera-hat, as it was the exact size of the one I had lost. But what was to be done with the Frenchman's?... Fool that I was! I rushed over to the table. The Frenchman had left his card, and I had forgotten all about it. And I hadn't asked the benevolent old gentleman where he lived. The Frenchman's card read: "M. de Beausire, No. — Washington Place." I decided to go myself to the address, state the matter to Monsieur de Beausire, and rescue the letter. I knew all about these Toddy-One-Boys, and I might be doing some girl a signal service.