Almost any day, on Plutoria Avenue or thereabouts, you may see little Mr. Spillikins out walking with his four tall sons, who are practically as old as himself.  
To be exact, Mr. Spillikins is twenty-four, and Bob, the oldest of the boys, must be at least twenty. Their exact ages are no longer known, because, by a dreadful accident, their mother forgot them. This was at a time when the boys were all at Mr. Wackem's Academy for Exceptional Youths in the foothills of Tennessee, and while their mother, Mrs. Everleigh, was spending the winter on the Riviera and felt that for their own sake she must not allow herself to have the boys with her.
 
But now, of course, since Mrs. Everleigh has remarried and become Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins there is no need to keep them at Mr. Wackem's any longer. Mr. Spillikins is able to look after them.
 
Mr. Spillikins generally wears a little top hat and an English morning coat. The boys are in Eton jackets and black trousers, which, at their mother's wish, are kept just a little too short for them. This is because Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins feels that the day will come some day—say fifteen years hence—when the boys will no longer be children, and meantime it is so nice to feel that they are still boys. Bob is the , but Sib the youngest is the tallest, whereas Willie the third boy is the dullest, although this has often been denied by those who claim that Gib the second boy is just a trifle duller. Thus at any rate there is a certain equality and good fellowship all round.
 
Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins is not to be seen walking with them. She is probably at the race-meet, being taken there by Captain of the United States navy, which Mr. Spillikins considers very handsome of him. Every now and then the captain, being in the navy, is compelled to be at sea for perhaps a whole afternoon or even several days; in which case Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins is very generally taken to the Hunt Club or the Country Club by , which Mr. Spillikins regards as thoughtful of him. Or if Lieutenant Hawk is also out of town for the day, as he sometimes has to be, because he is in the United States army, Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins is taken out by old Colonel Shake, who is in the State and who is at leisure all the time.
 
During their walks on Plutoria Avenue one may hear the four boys addressing Mr. Spillikins as "father" and "dad" in deep bull-frog voices.
 
"Say, dad," drawls Bob, "couldn't we all go to the ball game?"
 
"No. Say, dad," says Gib, "let's all go back to the house and play five-cent pool in the billiard-room."
 
"All right, boys," says Mr. Spillikins. And a few minutes later one may see them all up the steps of the Everleigh-Spillikins's , quite eager at the , and all talking together.
 
Now the whole of this daily , to the eye that can read it, represents the outcome of the love story of Mr. Spillikins, which during the summer houseparty at Castel Casteggio, the woodland retreat of Mr. and Mrs. Newberry.
 
But to understand the story one must turn back a year or so to the time when Mr. Peter Spillikins used to walk on Plutoria Avenue alone, or sit in the Mausoleum Club listening to the advice of people who told him that he really ought to get married.
 
In those days the first thing that one noticed about Mr. Peter Spillikins was his view of the other sex. Every time he passed a beautiful woman in the street he sa............