redly agreed that he had sometimes feared as much.

"That's what we always calls a guy like you," she explained ingenuously,
and added hopefully: "Well, you MUST a' seen our parade--all the pikers
see that--IT don't cost nothin'."

"I'm afraid I must also plead guilty to the charge of being a piker,"
Douglas admitted half-sheepishly, "for I did see the parade."

"Well, I was the one on the white horse right behind the lion cage," she
began excitedly. "You remember?"

"It's a little confused in my mind--" he caught her look of amazement,
"just AT PRESENT," he stammered, feeling her wrath again about to
descend upon him.

"Well, I'm the twenty-four sheet stand," she explained.

"Sheet!" Mandy shrieked from her corner.

"Yes--the billboards--the pictures," Polly said, growing impatient at
their persistent stupidity.

"She sure am a funny talkin' thing!" mumbled Mandy to herself, as she
clipped the withered leaves from a plant near the window.

"You are dead sure they know I ain't comin' on?" Polly asked with a
lingering suspicion in her voice.

"Dead sure"; and Douglas smiled to himself as he lapsed into her
vernacular.

There was a moment's pause. Polly realised for the first time that she
must actually readjust herself to a new order of things. Her eyes
again roved about the room. It was a cheerful place in which to be
imprisoned--even Polly could not deny that. The broad window at the back
with its white and pink chintz curtains on the inside, and its frame of
ivy on the outside, spoke of singing birds and sunshine all day long.
Everything from the white ceiling to the sweet-smelling matting that
covered the floor was spotlessly clean; the cane-bottomed rocker near
the curved window-seat with its pretty pillows told of days when
a convalescent might look in comfort at the garden beneath; the
counterpane, with its old-fashioned rose pattern, the little white
tidies on the back of each chair, and Mandy crooning beside the window,
all helped to make a homelike picture.

She wondered what Jim and Toby would say if they could see her now,
sitting like a queen in the midst of her soft coverlets, with no need to
raise even a finger to wait upon herself.

"Ain't it the limit?" she sighed, and with that Jim and Toby seemed to
drift farther away. She began to see their life apart from hers. She
could picture Jim with his head in his hands. She could hear his sharp
orders to the men. He was always short with the ot