She stepped into the hall and returned immediately.  “Here’s your overcoat, Willie.”

His expression was of despair.  “They’ll think I’m a lunatic and they’ll say so before everybody—­and I don’t blame ’em!  Overcoat on a hot day like this!  Except me, I don’t suppose there was ever anybody lived in the world and got to be going on eighteen years old and had to carry his silly old overcoat around with him in August—­because his mother made him!”

“Willie,” said Mrs. Baxter, “you don’t know how many thousands and thousands of mothers for thousands and thousands of years have kept their sons from taking thousands and thousands of colds—­just this way!”

He moaned.  “Well, and I got to be called a lunatic just because you’re nervous, I s’pose.  All right!”

She hung it upon his arm, kissed him; and he departed in a desperate manner.

However, having worn his tragic face for three blocks, he halted before a corner drug-store, and permitted his expression to improve as he gazed upon the window display of My Little Sweetheart All-Tobacco Cuban Cigarettes, the Package of Twenty for Ten Cents.  William was not a smoker—­that is to say, he had made the usual boyhood experiments, finding them discouraging; and though at times he considered it humorously man-about-town to say to a smoking friend, “Well, I’ll tackle one o’ your ole coffin-nails,” he had never made a purchase of tobacco in his life.  But it struck him now that it would be rather debonair to disport himself with a package of Little Sweethearts upon the excursion.

And the name!  It thrilled him inexpressibly, bringing a tenderness into his eyes and a glow into his bosom.  He felt that when he should smoke a Little Sweetheart it would be a tribute to the ineffable visitor for whom this party was being given—­it would bring her closer to him.  His young brow grew almost stern with determination, for he made up his mind, on the spot, that he would smoke oftener in the future—­he would become a confirmed smoker, and all his life he would smoke My Little Sweetheart All-Tobacco Cuban Cigarettes.

He entered and managed to make his purchase in a matter-of-fact way, as if he were doing something quite unemotional; then he said to the clerk: 

“Oh, by the by—­ah—­”

The clerk stared.  “Well, what else?”

“I mean,” said William, hurriedly, “there’s something I wanted to ’tend to, now I happen to be here.  I was on my way to take this overcoat to—­to get something altered at the tailor’s for next winter.  ’Course I wouldn’t want it till winter, but I thought I might as well get it done.”  He paused, laughing carelessly, for greater plausibility.  “I thought he’d prob’ly want lots of time on the job—­he’s a slow worker, I’ve noticed—­and so I decided I might just as well go ahead and let him get at it.  Well, so I was on my way there, but I just noticed I only got about six minutes more to get to a mighty important engagement I got this morning, and I’d like to leave it here and come by and get it on my way home, this evening.”