upon the return of Mr Pornsch. For the present he had disappeared to
attend to some business.

In the interim, the meetings continued without a break, and Dawn
unremittingly looked for the football news, now with the war crowded
into a far corner, by the special complexion that each daily chose to
put on political affairs.

"Just look up the football news," I said one day, "and see how my
friend Ernest is doing."

"He made a lot of goals as 'forward' in the last match. See!" she
coolly replied, putting her tapering forefinger on the name of R. E.
Breslaw, as she handed me the paper.

"Did he tell you he wanted to disguise his identity while here?"

"Yes; he told me all about it one day when we went to Sydney," she
replied, leaving me wondering what else they might have confided
during these jaunts.

Now that we required his presence Mr Pornsch was not in evidence, and
neither was anything to be heard of the red-headed footballer's
reappearance, though he had been absent four weeks, and this brought
us towards the end of June. At this date there appeared a paragraph
stating that Breslaw and several other amateur sportsmen were
contemplating a tour of America, to include the St Louis Exposition.

That night some one besides myself heard the roar of the passing
locomotives, but she did not confess the cause of her sleeplessness.
It was one of those irritations one cannot tell, so she let off her
irritation in other channels.

Matters did not brighten as the days went on. Two nights after
Ernest's reported departure for the States, "Dora" Eweword brought
Dawn home from Walker's committee meeting, and remained talking to her
in the otherwise deserted dining-room till a late hour. As soon as he
left Dawn came upstairs, and throwing herself face downwards on her
bed burst into violent weeping.

"What has come to you lately, Dawn?" I inquired. "Tell me what sort of
a twist you have put in your affairs so that I may be able to help
you."

"No one can help me," she crossly replied.

"Don't you think that I was once young, and have suffered all these
worries too? It is not so long since I was your age that I have
forgotten what may torment a girl's heart."

Thus abjured she presently made me her father-confessor.

Eweword it appeared had grown very pressing, and her grandma had urged
her to accept him as the best of her admirers. The old dame had not
observed the trend of matters with Ernest. In a house where we