dn't be treated like a child?" he fenced.

"Yes."

"Well, when you spoke of the house on the Battery being deeded over to
you, I knew that you must have reached your majority! The rest was
simple to figure out."

"Oh, dear!" she mourned. "It was such fun chasing you around the ship!"

"Yes? Well, I've emulated the startled fawn all I'm going to this trip."

"What's your present role?"

"Meditation upon the wonder of existence."

"Do you find it good?"

"Existence? That depends. Am I to come to Guenn Oaks?"

"I'm sure you'd be awfully in the way there," she said petulantly.
"You've been a perfect nuisance for the last two days."

"My picturesqueness has gone glimmering, now that I'm only a Smith
instead of a Daddleskink. Why, oh, why must these lovely illusions ever
perish!"

"_You_ killed cock-robin," she accused.

"Not at all. It was Dr. Alderson with his misplaced application of the
truth."

"Anyway, I don't find you nearly so entertaining, now that you're plain
Mr. Smith."

"Nor I you as Miss Cecily Wayne, equally plain if not plainer."

"In that case," she suggested with a mock-mournful glance from beneath
the slanted brows, "this acquaintance might as well die a painless
death."

"But for one little matter that you've forgotten."

"And that?"

"The Magnificent Manling of the Steerage."

"So I had forgotten! Let's go make our call on him. We must not neglect
him a moment longer."

The Tyro leaped to his feet and they ran, hand in hand like two
children, down to their point of observation of the less favored
passengers. They spent a lively half-hour with the small Teuton, at the
end of which Little Miss Grouch issued imperative commands to the Tyro
to the effect that he was to wait at the pier when they got in, and see
to it that mother and child were safely forwarded to the transfer.

"Yessum," said the Tyro meekly. "Anything further?"

"I'll let you know," she returned, royally. "You may wire me when the
commission is executed. Perhaps, if you carry it through very nicely,
I'll let you come to Guenn Oaks."

"Salaam, O Empress," returned the Tyro, executing a most elaborate
Oriental bow, the concluding spiral of which almost involved him in Mrs.
Charlton Denyse's suddenly impending periphery.

Mrs. Denyse retired three haughty paces.

"I wish to speak to Miss Wayne," she announced with a manner which
implied that she did not wish and never again would wish to speak to
Miss Wayne's c