"It is yours, Mr. Ames?"
A lifting of the brows, a widening of the eyes, denoted Miss Octavia's polite surprise.
"Beyond any question it is my property," I asserted.
"Your words interest me greatly, Mr. Ames. As you know, the grim hard life of the twentieth century palls upon me, and I am deeply interested in everything that pertains to adventure and romance. Tell me more, if you are free to do so, of this slipper which I now return to you."
I received Hezekiah's worn little pump into my hands as though it were an object of high consecration, and with a gravity which I hope matched Miss Octavia's own. I was, I think, by this time completely hollisterized, if I may coin the word.
"As I am nothing if not frank, Miss Hollister, I will confess to you that this shoe came into my possession in a very curious way. One day last spring I was in Boston, having been called there on professional business. In the evening, I left my hotel for a walk, crossed the Common, took a turn through the Public Garden, where many devoted lovers adorned the benches, and then strolled aimlessly along Beacon Street."
"I know that historic thoroughfare well," interrupted Miss Hollister, "as my friend Miss Prudence Biddeford has lived there for half a century, and once, while I was staying in her house, she gave me her recipe for Boston brown bread, thereby placing me greatly in her debt."
"Then, being acquainted with the neighborhood and its sublimated social atmosphere, you will be interested in the experience I am about to describe," I continued, reassured by Miss Octavia's sympathetic attention to my recital. "I was passing a house which I have not since been able to identify exactly, though I have several times revisited Boston in the hope of doing so, when suddenly and without any warning whatever this slipper dropped at my feet. All the houses in the neighborhood seemed deserted, with windows and doors tightly boarded, and my closest scrutiny failed to discover any opening from which that slipper might have been flung. The region is so decorous, and acts of violence are so foreign to its dignity and repose, that I could scarce believe that I held that bit of tan leather in my hand. Nor did its unaccountable precipitation into the street seem the act of a housemaid, nor could I believe that a nursery governess had thus sought diversion from the roof above. I hesitated for a moment not knowing how to meet this emergency; then I boldly attacked the bell of the house from which I believed the slipper to have proceeded. I rang until a policeman, whose speech was fragrant of the Irish coasts, bade me desist, informing me that the family had only the previous day left for the shore. The house he assured me was utterly vacant. That, Miss Hollister, is all there is of the story. But ever since I have carried that slipper with me. It was in my pocket to-night as I traversed the upper halls of your house, seeking the ghost of that British soldier, and I had just discovered my loss when I heard you calling. In returning it you have conferred upon me the greatest imaginable favor. I have faith that sometime, somewhere, I shall find the owner of that slipper. Would you not infer, from its diminutive size, and the fine, suggestive delicacy of its outlines that the owner is a person of aristocratic lineage and of breeding? I will confess that nothing is nearer my heart than the hope that one day I shall meet the young lady—I am sure she must be young—who wore that slipper and dropped it as it seemed from the clouds, at my feet there in sedate Beacon Street, that most solemn of residential sanctuaries."
"Mr. Ames," began Miss Hollister instantly, with an assumed severity that her smile belied, "I cannot recall that my niece Hezekiah ever visited in Beacon Street; yet I dare say that if she had done so and a young man of your pleasing appearance had passed beneath her window, one of her slippers might very easily have become detached from Hezekiah's foot and fallen with a nice calculation directly in front of you. But now, Mr. Ames, will you kindly carry your candle into that trunk-room?"
And I had been pluming myself upon the completeness of my hollisterization! There was nothing for me but to obey, and my heart sank as my imagination pictured Hezekiah's discomfiture when we should find her seated on the huge trunk behind the door. And that stockinged foot already called in appealing accents to the shoe I held in my hand! The foundations of the world shook as I remembered the compact by which Hezekiah was excluded from the house, and realized what the impending discovery would mean to Cecilia, her father, and the wayward Hezekiah, too! But I was in for it. Miss Octavia indicated by an imperious nod that I was to precede her into the trunk-room, and I strode before her with my candle held high.