of course he can rip silk socks all to pieces.  He will take silk-and-wool socks of normal length, and in one washing will so reduce them that you can hardly get your foot into them, and that the upper margins of them come only about an inch above your shoe-tops.  People who have no business to do so, are thus enabled, when you are seated, to see the tops of your socks and to amuse themselves by counting the tin tags with which they are adorned.  Also, the socks, being so short, become better pullers than the garters, so that instead of the garters holding the socks up, the socks pull the garters down.  This usually occurs as you are walking up the aisle in church, or in the middle of a dance, and of course your garter manages to come unclasped, into the bargain, and goes trailing after you, like a convict’s ball and chain.

For a time you can stand this sort of thing, but presently you begin to pine for the delicate washtub artistry of Amanda, at home; for vestments which, when sent to the wash, do not come back riddled with holes, or smelling as though they had been washed in carbolic acid, or in the tub with a large fish.

So, presently, you fold up your rags like the Arabs, fasten your battered baggage shut as best you can, put it on a taxi, and head for the railway station.  No train ever looks so handsome as the home-bound train you find there.  No engineer ever looks so sturdy and capable, leaning from the window of his cab, as the one who is to take you home.

Up through the South you fly, past many places you have seen before, past towns where you have friends whom you would like to see again—­only not now!  Now nothing will do but home!  Out of the region of magnolias, palmettoes and live-oaks you pass into the region of pines, and out of the region of pines into that of maples and elms.  At last you come to Washington....  Only a few hours longer!  How satisfyingly the train slips along!  You are not conscious of curves, or even of turning wheels beneath you.  Your progress is like the swift glide of a flying sled.  Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Trenton.  Nothing to do but look from the car windows and rejoice.  Not that you love the South less, but that you love home more.

“I wonder if we will ever go on such a trip as this again?” you say to your companion.

“I don’t believe so,” he replies.

“It doesn’t seem now as though we should,” you return.  “But do you remember?—­we talked the same way when we were coming home before.  What will it be two years hence?”

“True,” he says.  “And of course there’s Conan Doyle.  He always thinks he’s never going to do it any more.  But in a year or so Sherlock Holmes pops out again, drawn by Freddy Steele, all over the cover of ‘Collier’s.’  Not that your stuff is as good as Doyle’s, but that the general case is somewhat parallel.”

“Doyle has killed Holmes,” you put in.

“Yes,” he agrees, “and several times you’ve almost killed me.”