cle Bash's ghost in the familiar dining-room would have been a welcome
diversion. I was speculating as to just what he would say about his
widow and the whole mess at Barton when Mrs. Farnsworth addressed me
pleadingly.

"If you knew that we want you to play with us only a few days
longer--three days, shall we say, Alice?--if you knew that then we'll
untangle everything, wouldn't you be nice--very nice?"

In spite of myself I couldn't resist this appeal. I was more and more
impressed by the fineness, the charm of Mrs. Farnsworth. When she
dropped the make-believe foolishness in which she indulged quite as
amusingly as Alice, she appeared to be a very sensible person. The humor
danced in her eyes now, but her glance was more than an appeal; it was a
command.

"If you knew that our troubles are not at all the troubles you're
thinking about, but very different----"

"Please pardon me!" I muttered humbly, and wished that Alice were not so
bewitching in a sailor hat. It may have been the hat or only Mrs.
Farnsworth's pleading tone that brought me to a friendlier attitude
toward the universe and its visible inhabitants. The crowd thinned out,
but we lingered, talking of all manner of things.

"We must come in again very soon," said Alice. "And next time we shan't
run away, which was very naughty. I suppose when you begin a story you
just have to keep it going or it will die on your hands. That's the way
with our story, you know. Of course it's unkind to mystify you: but you
are in the story just as we are."

My mystification was certainly deep enough without this suggestion that
I was a mere character in a tale whose awkward beginning aroused only
the gravest apprehensions as to the conclusion. She looked at her watch
and continued:

"I'm so absurd--really I am, in ever so many ways, that no one would
ever put me in a book. Every one would say no such person ever existed!
It's incredible! And so I have to pretend I'm in a story all the time.
It's the only way I can keep happy. And so many people are in my story
now, not only Montani and the poor fellow locked up at Barton--oh, what
if he should escape! Constance, it would be splendid if he should
escape!"

"I don't think it would be splendid if he escaped!" I exclaimed, sitting
up very straight at the bare thought of such a calamity. "He would
either kill me or sue me for damages."

"Oh, that wouldn't fit into the story at all! Murder and damages are so
frightfull