they will be influenced in spite of themselves; and it has occurred
to me----"

"Yes?" said Margaret Elizabeth.

"Well, that it applies in your case." Mr. Pennington cleared his throat.
"A certain person whom we know has behaved very well of late; better
than I thought was in him, but--unless you are pretty sure you can't
live without him--Now this is rank treason on my part, but don't be too
soft-hearted, Margaret Elizabeth."

Mr. Pennington returned to his stock-market reports, and silence
reigned, but presently two hands rested on his shoulders, and a velvet
cheek touched his for a moment. "Thank you, Uncle Gerry," said Margaret
Elizabeth.

CHAPTER TWELVE

_Which shows Miss Bentley recovering from a fit of what Uncle Bob
calls Cantankerousness; in which a shipwrecked letter is brought to
light, and Dr. Prue is called again to visit the child of the Park
Superintendent._

"And he turned into a splendid prince (he had been one all the time
really, you know), and he laid all his riches at Violetta's feet, and
made her a princess, because she had been true to him through thick and
thin."

Virginia's voice rose in triumphant climax.

"That's all very fine in a fairy-tale, Virginia, and it is an extremely
good one for a little girl like you to make up out of her own head. But
you know in real life it is different." Margaret Elizabeth gazed
pensively into the fire.

Virginia, prone upon the hearth-rug, was disposed to argue what she did
not understand. "How different?"

"Well, in a fairy-tale you can have things as you want them, but in
real life you get tangled up in what other people want, and with duty
and common sense; and when you determine to follow your--" Margaret
Elizabeth was going to say "heart," but changed to "intuitions," "you
are left high and dry on a desert island."

Virginia was to be excused if she failed to make head or tail of this.
"I wish the Candy Man would come back," she remarked irrelevantly. "He
was much nicer than Tim. He liked fairy-tales. He said he was coming
some time."

"Oh, did he?" said Miss Bentley.

The reference to a desert island, and a disposition to quarrel with
fairy-tales, go to show that while she was decidedly more like herself
than in the last chapter, her recovery was not yet complete. In fact
Margaret Elizabeth was suffering from the irritability that so often
accompanies convalescence. Cantankerousness was Uncle Bob's word for it,
and he defended i