railing and
looked down at her with something very like a soulful expression.

"I might have known all along," Patsy was thinking, "that a back like
that would have a front like this. Sure, ye couldn't get a real man
to dress in knee-length petticoats." And then, to settle all doubts,
she faced him with grim determination. "I let you bring me here
because I had something to say to you. But first of all, did you come
down here to-night on that five-something train from New York?"

The man nodded.

"Did you get to the train by a Madison Avenue car, taken from the
corner of Seventy-seventh Street, maybe?"

"Why, how did you know?" The melancholy was giving place to rather
pleased curiosity.

"How do I know!" Patsy glared at him. "I know because I've followed
you every inch of the way--followed you to tell you I believed in
you--you--you!" and her voice broke with a groan.

"Oh, I say, that was awfully good of you." This time the smile had
right of way, and such a flattered, self-conscious smile as it was!
"You know everybody takes me rather as a joke."

"Joke!" Patsy's eyes blazed. "Well, you're the most serious,
impossible joke I ever met this side of London. Why, a person would
have to dynamite his sense of humor to appreciate you."

"I don't think I understand." He felt about in his waistcoat pocket
and drew forth a monocle, which he adjusted carefully. "Would you
mind saying that again?"

Patsy's hands dropped helplessly to her lap. "I couldn't--only, after
a woman has trailed a man she doesn't know across a country she
doesn't know to a place she doesn't know--and without a wardrobe
trunk, a letter of credit, or a maid, just to tell him she believes
in him, he becomes the most tragically serious thing that ever
happened to her in all her life."

"Oh, I say, I always thought they were pretty good; but I never
thought any one would appreciate my poetry like that."

"Poetry! Do you--do that, too?"

"That's all I do. I am devoting my life to it; that's why my family
take me a little--flippantly."

A faint streak of hope shot through Patsy's mind. "Would you mind
telling me your name?"

"Why, I thought you knew. I thought you said that was why you
wanted to--to--Hang it all! my name's Peterson-Jones--Wilfred
Peterson-Jones."

Patsy was on her feet, clasping her hands in a shameless burst of
emotion while she dropped into her own tongue. "Oh, that's a
beautiful name--a grand name! Don't ye ever be chang