avor.

"Conventionality, like charity, begins at home," he replied quickly.
"And one would hardly call this advertisement a pattern of formal
etiquette."

"True enough," she admitted, dimpling, and Average Jones was
congratulating himself on his diplomacy, when the querulous voice broke
in again, this time too low for his ears.

"I don't ask you the real reason for your extraordinary call," pursued
the girl with a glint of mischief in her eyes, after she had responded
in an aside, "but auntie thinks you've come to steal my dog. She thinks
that of every one lately."

"Auntie? Your dog? Then you're Sylvia Graham. I might have known it."

"I don't know how you might have known it. But I am Sylvia Graham--if
you insist on introducing me to yourself."

"Miss Graham," said the visitor promptly and gravely, "let me present
A.V.R.E. Jones: a friend--"

"Not the famous Average Jones!" cried the girl. "That is why your face
seemed so familiar. I've seen your picture at Edna Hale's. You got her
'blue fires' back for her. But really, that hardly explains your being
here, in this way, you know."

"Frankly, Miss Graham, it was just as a lark that I answered the
advertisement. But now that I'm here and find you here, it looks--er--as
if it might--er--be more serious."

A tinge of pink came into the girl's cheeks, but she answered lightly
enough:

"Indeed, it may, for you, if uncle finds you here with those beetles."

"Never mind me or the beetles. I'd like to know about the dog that your
aunt is worrying over. Is he here with you?"

The soft curve of Miss Graham's lips straightened a little. "I really
think," she said with decision, "that you had better explain further
before questioning."

"Nothing simpler. Once upon a time there lived a crack-brained young Don
Quixote who wandered through an age of buried romance piously searching
for trouble. And, twice upon a time, there dwelt in an enchanted
stone castle in West Sixteenth Street an enchanting young damsel in
distress--"

"I'm not a damsel in distress," interrupted Miss Graham, passing over
the adjective.

The young man leaned to her. The half smile had passed from his lips,
and his eyes were very grave.

"Not--er--if your dog were to--er--disappear?" he drawled quietly.

The swift unexpectedness of the counter broke down the girl's guard.

"You mean Uncle Hawley," she said.

"And your suspicions jump with mine."

"They don't!" she denied hotly. "You're