ere with us. Isn't there, Mr. Jerry?"

"Scads of room. I don't see how you can hesitate." And he looked at
the crowded street car where people were standing on the platform and
the conductor was calling impatiently: "Move up in front!"

Miss Thorley looked also. The street car was not so inviting as the
automobile. Prejudiced as she was she had to admit that. She laughed.
"Oh, very well," she said.

Mr. Jerry jumped out and triumphantly robbed the street car company of
a fare. He helped Miss Thorley in beside Mary Rose and Jenny Lind.

"You see there's lots of room," Mary Rose fairly bubbled with joy.
"Just as Mr. Jerry said. Aren't you glad to see Jenny Lind again? I
can't see that she has changed a feather."

"We'll leave her at the house and then run out to Nokomis for a breath
of air. That friendly flat of the Paulovitch's has almost strangled
me. I have a great yearning for wide open spaces," Mr. Jerry told Miss
Thorley over Mary Rose's head.

They left Jenny Lind with Aunt Kate and drove along the boulevards and
around the lake.

"Isn't it a beautiful world?" asked Mary Rose suddenly. "I just love
it and everybody in it! Don't you, Mr. Jerry?"

"I won't go so far as to say I love everybody but I certainly do love
you, Mary Rose," he told her with pleasing promptness.

"And Miss Thorley, too?" demanded Mary Rose, jealously afraid that Miss
Thorley might feel hurt if she were excluded from Mr. Jerry's
affections. "She's the enchanted princess, you know," she reminded him
in a whisper. "You must love her."

Mr. Jerry was so silent that Mary Rose pinched his arm.

"Sure, I love Miss Thorley," he said then, very hurriedly.

"And she loves you, don't you, Miss Thorley?" Mary Rose pinched Miss
Thorley's arm to remind her that something was expected of her, also.

There was a longer pause. Mary Rose had to pinch Miss Thorley's arm a
second time and Mr. Jerry, himself, had to ask her in a funny shaky
sort of a voice:

"Do you, Bess? Do you?"

Miss Thorley tried to frown and look away but she was not able to take
her eyes from the two faces, the man's and the little girl's, which
looked at her with such imploring eagerness. And what she saw in those
two faces made her heart give a great throb. In a flash she knew, and
knew beyond a doubt, that at last she could answer the question that
had been tormenting her for over half a year. Long, long before that
she had learned that everything