And he chuckled the following morning as he dressed.
"They were going to strip me, were they," he said to himself, as he pulled a small roll of bills from the vest pocket of his dress suit. "Well, not quite. Let me see. I had nineteen dollars with me. Now I have five, ten, and ten are twenty, and five are twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, and two are thirty, thirty-one. And some change. That's not stripping, anyway."
He laughed again as he pulled two cards from his pocket and saw his memoranda of dresses.
"Good thought. I'd better read them over, for the morning paper may contain some description, and I'd like to make good. 'Mrs. Paton, wht. slk.' white silk. 'Mrs. Mull, d. t.' d. t.? What does d. t. stand for? d. t.? I can't think of anything but delirium tremens, but that's not it. D. t. Dark—dark what? Dark trous—No. Dark tresses? Not that, either. Dark—trousseau? Hardly that. She's just married, but she didn't have her whole trousseau on. Dark—? Search me, I don't know. 'Mrs. B.' Mrs. Brown, 'l. d.' Long dress? Lawn dress? No, lavender dress, I remember. This cipher is worse than the one in the 'Gold Bug.' I wish I had written it out."
Some of the things he could interpret and some he could not, but he could remember none when he took his eyes away from the card.
He found his wife waiting for him in the breakfast room, dressed in a blue tea-gown, and she looked so charming that he could not refrain from taking two kisses from her red lips. She put her arms around his neck and took one of them back again.
"How are you this morning? Did you have a good time at the dance?"
"Oh, so-so," Tom answered. "I've had better."
"Breakfast is ready. Now tell me all about it while we eat."
"Well, it was just like all others. Same people there, dressed about the same. I was in hopes you would read about it in the morning paper and let me off. That would give you a better account of it than I can."