ing.

"Oh, they were driving?" said I.

"Yes. They could easily have been in long ago. There _must_ have been an
accident. Miss Rivers is always so depressingly prompt. Such a strange
girl! She considers it quite a sin to break a promise, even to a man,
and she seems actually to _like_ telling the truth."

We soothed the Chaperon's fears as well as we could; but when half-past
ten came, and there were still no signs of the missing ones, we both
began to be troubled.

"If they don't appear in ten minutes, I'll drive slowly in the direction
by which they should return," I said; but the words had hardly left my
lips when the girls walked into the hall, with Tibe. Both charming faces
were flushed, and it was evident that something exciting had happened.
But whatever it was, nobody was the worse for it. Tibe flew to his
mistress, knocking down a child, and almost upsetting an old gentleman
by darting unexpectedly between his legs, while the girls rushed into
explanations.

"We're so sorry to have kept you waiting, but we've had _such_ an
adventure!" cried Nell. "We were driving back from the 'village,' when
Tibe gave a leap and jumped out of the cab before we could hold him."

"We were _terrified_," broke in Phyllis.

"And he disappeared in the most horribly mysterious way," finished Nell.

"We thought some one in the crowd must have stolen him, so we stopped
the cab----"

"And began tearing about looking for him, asking every human being in
every known language _except_ Dutch, if they'd seen a dog, or a _chien_,
or a _hund_----"

"But nobody understood, so we went into a lot of shops, and he wasn't in
any of them----"

"And we were in _despair_. We shouldn't have _dared_ come back without
him----"

"I should think not!" cut in the Chaperon.

"And we were on the way to the nearest police-station, with a dear old
gentleman who could speak English, and a whole procession of extraneous
creatures who couldn't, when we saw Tibe, calmly driving in a carriage
with----"

"A strange man, and----"

"He never so much as looked at us, but we were _sure_ we couldn't be
mistaken, at least Nell was; so we deserted our old gentleman, and began
running after Tibe's carriage, shrieking for it to stop."

"Naturally, every one thought we were mad; but we didn't care, and at
last the man in the carriage realized we were after him. If he _hadn't_
stopped, we should have known that he'd deliberately stolen Tibe; but he
did st