n accident
or otherwise. As she came down the staircase a gentleman crossed the
threshold of the parlor and came to meet her,--and this gentleman was no
other than Ralph Gowan.

"Let me have the pleasure of putting you into your--"

"Cab," ended Dolly, with a trill of a laugh,--it was so evident that
he had been going to say "carriage." "Thank you, with the greatest of
pleasure. Indeed, it is rather a relief to me, for they generally keep
me waiting. And I detest waiting."

He handed her into her seat, and lingered to see that she was
comfortable, perhaps with unnecessary caution; and then, when she gave
him her hand through the window, he held it for a moment longer than was
exactly called for by the exigencies of the occasion.

"You will not forget that you have given me permission to call," he
said, hesitating slightly.

"Oh, dear no!" she answered. "I shall not forget. We are always glad to
see people--in Vagabondia."

And as the cab drove off, she waved the hand he had held in an airy
gesture of adieu, gave him a bewildering farewell nod, and, withdrawing
her face from the window, disappeared in the shadow within.

"Great Jove!" meditated Ralph Gowan, when he had seen the last of her.
"And this is a nursery governess,--a sort of escape-valve for the spleen
and ill moods of that woman in copper-color. She teaches them French and
music, I dare say, and makes those spicy little jokes of hers over
the dog-eared arithmetic. Ah, well! such is impartial Fortune," And he
strolled back into the house again, to make his adieus to Lady Augusta,
with the bewitching Greuze face fresh in his memory.

But, for her part, Dolly, having left him behind in the Philistine camp,
was nestling comfortably in the dark corner of her cab, thinking of
Griffith, as she always did think of him when she found herself alone
for a moment.

"I wonder if he will be at home when I get there," she said. "Poor
fellow! he would find it dull enough without me, unless they were all
in unusually good spirits. I wonder if the time ever will come when we
shall have a little house of our own, and can go out together or stay at
home, just as we like."

CHAPTER III. ~ IN WHICH THE TRAIN IS LAID.

"After a holiday comes a rest day." The astuteness of this proverb
continually proved itself in Vagabondia, and this was more particularly
the case when the holiday had been Dolly's, inasmuch as Dolly was
invariably called upon to "fight her battle