her on either side, all unregarded. She grabbed
Mr. Bennet frantically by one arm.

"Oh, Mr. Bennet!"

"What's the matter? Did you leave something in the theater?"

"No! But I've left Clay waiting in the machine for me all this time in
front of that store, and I never thought of him once until you said,
'home!'"

The last part of this information was wafted on the breeze to Mr.
Bennet, for Arethusa had started off down the street with the swiftness
of the wind itself. He followed her immediately, but considerably more
slowly as to locomotion (he was no sprinter and Mr. Bennet rarely
forgot his dignity) and with the parcel containing Miss Asenath's
birthday gift in one hand. Arethusa had dropped it directly at his feet
in her excitement. When he caught up with her, she was standing in
front of the shop gazing wildly up and down the street, for no Clay and
no automobile were to be discovered anywhere.

The door attendant, when questioned by Mr. Bennet, said that he
remembered the chauffeur referred to very well. He had seemed to be
very worried about the young lady, and had left his car several times
to ask him if he had seen her come out. But he had driven off some time
ago, about three hours ago, the door attendant thought it was, to be as
exact as he could.

Mr. Bennet took Arethusa home in a taxicab to an excited and distraught
household.

When Clay had come back without her, with his strange story of having
waited for her, and that she had never returned to the machine, Ross
had been perfectly sure that she had been kidnapped, and he had gone
impetuously to the police station to start an immediate search. Elinor
was prostrate in her room, visioning all sorts of dreadful things that
might have happened to an Arethusa always too prone to make chance
acquaintances, when Arethusa herself, as repentant and contrite a cause
of it all as it was possible for her to be, walked in.

Elinor would not allow Ross to scold her after she heard Arethusa's
sobbing explanation, that she was having such a good time she forgot
everything else; for she said that he was really more to blame for that
than anyone concerned.

Which rather cryptic statement, if Arethusa failed of comprehension,
seemed to be quite clear to her father.

CHAPTER XX

The winter sped away until Christmas, on wings of fleetness that made
the days seem as if they had only been hours since Arethusa had come to
Lewisburg. Life was crowded so ful