nd Polly, nor
indeed did I ever think of them again, till Polly's letter and mummy
case recalled them to my memory.

Perhaps for pretty Leonora's sake I did, after all, take up and open
the vast cylindrical roll of MS.[4] in the mummy case. Dawn found me
still reading the following record of unparalleled adventure.[5]

[4]
Don't you think it would stand being cut a little?--PUBLISHER.

We shall see.--ED.

[5]
There is just one thing that puzzles me. Polly and Leonora
have gone, no man knows where, and, taking everything into
consideration, it may be a good two thousand years before they
come back.

Ought I not, then, to invest, _in my own name_, the
princely cheque of the Intelligent Publishers?--ED.

CHAPTER II.

POLLY'S NARRATIVE.

I am the plainest woman in England, bar none.[6] Even in youth I was
not, strictly speaking, voluptuously lovely. Short, stumpy, with a
fringe like the thatch of a newly evicted cottage, such was my
appearance at twenty, and such it remains. Like Cain, I was branded.[7]
But enough of personalities. I had in youth but one friend, a lady of
kingly descent (the kings, to be sure, were Irish), and of bewitching
loveliness. When she rushed into my lonely rooms, one wild winter
night, with a cradle in her arms and a baby in the cradle; when she
besought me to teach that infant Hittite, Hebrew, and the Differential
Calculus, and to bring it up in college, on commons (where the air is
salubrious), what could I do but acquiesce? It is unusual, I know, for
a student of my sex, however learned, to educate an infant in college
and bring her up on commons. But for once the uncompromising nature of
my charms strangled the breath of scandal in the bud, and little
Leonora O'Dolite became the darling of the university. The old Keeper
of the Bodleian was a crusty bachelor, who liked nothing young but
calf, and preferred morocco to _that_. But even _he_ loved Leonora. One
night the little girl was lost, and only after looking for her in the
Hebdomadal Boardroom, in the Sheldonian, the Pusaeum, and all the
barges, did we find that unprincipled old man amusing her by letting
off crackers and Roman-candles among the Mexican MSS. in the Bodleian!

[6]
I may as well say at once that I _will not_ be responsible for
Polly's style. Sometimes it is flat, they tell me, and
sometimes it is flamboyant, whatever they