nd over and over
again, only she said _over_ so often that her adopted parent said for
Heaven's sake stop, or he should write the word into his letters.
However, the end of the last despatch was at hand, and he himself
took up the conversation on signing it.

"Yours faithfully, Algernon Fenwick. That's the lot! I agree with
the kitten."

"What about?"

"About if he has any. I believe he'd be glad if Miss Wilson took
the bit in her teeth and bolted."

"You agree with Prosy?" As Sally says this, without a thought in
a thoughtful face but what belongs to the subject, her mother is
conscious that she herself is quite prepared to infer that Prosy
already knows all about it. She has got into the habit of hearing
that he knows about things.

"What does Vereker say?" Thus Fenwick.

"He'll be here in a minute, and you can ask him. That's him! I mean
that's his ring."

"It's just like any other ring, chick." It is her mother who speaks.
But Sally says: "Nonsense! as if I didn't know Prosy's ring!" And
Dr. Vereker appears, quartet bound, for this was the weekly musical
evening at Krakatoa Villa.

"Jeremiah wants to know whether you don't think Tishy's male parent
would be jolly glad if she and Julius took the bit in their teeth and
bolted?" "I shouldn't be the least surprised if they did," is the
doctor's reply. But it does not strike Sally as rising to the height
of her Draconic summary.

"You're not shining, Dr. Conrad," she says; "you're evading the point.
What do _you_ think Gaffer Bristles thinks, that's the point?" Dr.
Conrad appears greatly exhilarated and refreshed by Sally, whose mother
seems to share his feeling, but she enjoins caution, for all that.

"Do take care, kitten," she says. "They're on the stairs." But Sally
considers "they" are miles off, and will take ages getting upstairs.
"They've only just met at the door," is her explanatory comment,
showing appreciation of one human weakness.

"Suppose we were to get it put in more official form!" Fenwick
suggests. "Would Professor Sales Wilson be very much shocked if his
daughter and Paganini made a runaway match of it?" The name Paganini
has somehow leaked out of Cattley's counting-house, and become common
property.

"I think, if you ask me," says Vereker, speaking to Fenwick, but never
taking his eyes off Sally, on whom they feed, "that Professor Sales
Wilson would be very much relieved."

"_That's_ right!" says Sally, speaking as to a pupil who h