probable termination of affairs.

However, I did not show this letter, as in matchmaking, like in good
cooking, things have to be done to the turn, and this was not the
opportune turn.

"Oh, well," I said, "so long as you don't let your little arrangement
get abroad, I don't expect it will harm Eweword."

"No fear of it getting abroad. I've threatened him if it does that a
contradiction that will be true will also get abroad by being put in
the 'Noonoon Advertiser.'"

Next night, however, I found Dawn stamping on something glittering
that spread about the floor, and by inquiry elicited--

"That infernal 'Dora' Eweword has had the cheek to give me a ring, and
that's what I've done with it, and that's all the hope he has of ever
marrying me," she exclaimed, bringing the heel of her high-arched foot
another thump on the fragments.

"He's a bit too quick with his signs and badges of slavery. He's so
complacent with himself, and thinks he's ousted the 'red-headed mug'
as he calls him, that I hate him."

"He has a right to be complacent. You have given him reason to be. He
has won you, so you have told him, and he believes you."

"Yes, I know, and it makes me all the madder to think of it."

I suppressed a chuckle; even before attaining my teens I had never
been so splendidly, autocratically _young_ as this beautiful
high-spirited creature!

"Let things settle awhile, and then we'll pour them off the dregs," I
advised.

TWENTY-TWO.

"O Spirit, and the Nine Angels who watch us,
And Thy Son, and Mary Virgin,
Heal us of the wrong of man."

Outside politics the next item of interest on the Clay programme was
the reappearance of Mr Pornsch, who came for afternoon tea, during
which he invited himself to evening tea later on, and before it took
Dawn's time in the drawing-room trying some late songs. Dawn averred
that it was with difficulty she had restrained from setting fire to
him or attacking him with the piano-stool.

He got so far with his "love-making" on this occasion that he had
asked Dawn to take a little walk with him, which she had readily
consented to do, as it would enable her to entrap him for the
tarring-and-feathering upon which she had determined.

"He is going to meet me over among the grapes in the shade of the
osage breakwind. Do you think we will be able to manage him? Let us be
sure to have everything well arranged," whispered Dawn to me as we
came to evening tea.

Nea