backward before her; and next she was seated at a little table by
a railing over which climbed a jessamine vine.

There seemed to be a wordless invitation to purchase; she consulted
a collection of small coins in a thin purse, and received from them
license to order a glass of beer. There she sat, inhaling and absorbing
it all--the new-coloured, new-shaped life in a fairy palace in an
enchanted wood.

At fifty tables sat princes and queens clad in all the silks and gems of
the world. And now and then one of them would look curiously at Jerry's
fare. They saw a plain figure dressed in a pink silk of the kind that is
tempered by the word "foulard," and a plain face that wore a look of
love of life that the queens envied.

Twice the long hands of the clocks went round, Royalties thinned from
their _al fresco_ thrones, and buzzed or clattered away in their
vehicles of state. The music retired into cases of wood and bags of
leather and baize. Waiters removed cloths pointedly near the plain
figure sitting almost alone.

Jerry's fare rose, and held out her numbered card simply:

"Is there anything coming on the ticket?" she asked.

A waiter told her it was her cab check, and that she should give it to
the man at the entrance. This man took it, and called the number. Only
three hansoms stood in line. The driver of one of them went and routed
out Jerry asleep in his cab. He swore deeply, climbed to the captain's
bridge and steered his craft to the pier. His fare entered, and the cab
whirled into the cool fastnesses of the park along the shortest homeward
cuts.

At the gate a glimmer of reason in the form of sudden suspicion seized
upon Jerry's beclouded mind. One or two things occurred to him. He
stopped his horse, raised the trap and dropped his phonographic voice,
like a lead plummet, through the aperture:

"I want to see four dollars before goin' any further on th' thrip. Have
ye got th' dough?"

"Four dollars!" laughed the fare, softly, "dear me, no. I've only got a
few pennies and a dime or two."

Jerry shut down the trap and slashed his oat-fed horse. The clatter
of hoofs strangled but could not drown the sound of his profanity.
He shouted choking and gurgling curses at the starry heavens; he cut
viciously with his whip at passing vehicles; he scattered fierce and
ever-changing oaths and imprecations along the streets, so that a late
truck driver, crawling homeward, heard and was abashed. But he knew his
reco