But she rushed after him and caught him tightly and sobbed, "Oh, Watts--Watts--Watts McHurdie--are you never going to have any more snap in you than that ?" As he kicked away the earth from under him, Watts McHurdie saw the light in a window of the Culpepper home, and when he came down to earth again five minutes later, he said, "Well, I was just a-thinking how nice it would be to go over to Culpeppers' and kind of tell them the news!" "They'll have news of their own pretty soon, I expect," replied Nellie.

And to Watts' blank look she replied: "The way that man Brownwell keeps shining around.

He was there four nights last week, and he's been there two this week already.

I don't see what Molly Culpepper can be thinking of." So they deferred the visit to the Culpeppers', and in due time Watts McHurdie flitted down Lincoln Avenue and felt himself wafted along Main Street as far in the clouds as a mortal may be.

And though it was nearly midnight, he brought out his accordion and sat playing it, beating time with his left foot, and in his closed eyes seeing visions that by all the rights of this game of life should come only to youth.
And the guests in the Thayer House next morning asked, "Well, for heaven's sake, who was that playing 'Silver Threads among the Gold' along there about midnight ?--he surely must know it by this time." And Adrian Brownwell, sitting on the Culpepper veranda the next night but one, said: "Colonel, your harness-maker friend is a musical artist.