ars for her father, she
was also regretting that she had not boldly carried her Malacca stick
down-town with her. Her vivacity increased automatically.

"Perhaps the clerk thought you wanted the cigars for yourself," Russell
suggested. "He may have taken you for a Spanish countess."

"I'm sure he did!" Alice agreed, gaily; and she hummed a bar or two of
"LaPaloma," snapping her fingers as castanets, and swaying her body a
little, to suggest the accepted stencil of a "Spanish Dancer." "Would
you have taken me for one, Mr. Russell?" she asked, as she concluded the
impersonation.

"I? Why, yes," he said. "I'D take you for anything you wanted me to."

"Why, what a speech!" she cried, and, laughing, gave him a quick glance
in which there glimmered some real surprise. He was looking at
her quizzically, but with the liveliest appreciation. Her surprise
increased; and she was glad that he had joined her.

To be seen walking with such a companion added to her pleasure. She
would have described him as "altogether quite stunning-looking"; and she
liked his tall, dark thinness, his gray clothes, his soft hat, and his
clean brown shoes; she liked his easy swing of the stick he carried.

"Shouldn't I have said it?" he asked. "Would you rather not be taken for
a Spanish countess?"

"That isn't it," she explained. "You said----"

"I said I'd take you for whatever you wanted me to. Isn't that all
right?"

"It would all depend, wouldn't it?"

"Of course it would depend on what you wanted."

"Oh, no!" she laughed. "It might depend on a lot of things."

"Such as?"

"Well----" She hesitated, having the mischievous impulse to say, "Such
as Mildred!" But she decided to omit this reference, and became serious,
remembering Russell's service to her at Mildred's house. "Speaking of
what I want to be taken for," she said;--"I've been wondering ever since
the other night what you did take me for! You must have taken me for the
sister of a professional gambler, I'm afraid!"

Russell's look of kindness was the truth about him, she was to discover;
and he reassured her now by the promptness of his friendly chuckle.
"Then your young brother told you where I found him, did he? I kept my
face straight at the time, but I laughed afterward--to myself. It
struck me as original, to say the least: his amusing himself with those
darkies."

"Walter IS original," Alice said; and, having adopted this new view of
her brother's eccentricities, sh