on agreed, smiling down into her eyes.
"There are people like that--little dust-flowers cheering up the
wayside for the rest of us poor brutes."

She said, wistfully: "I suppose you've known a lot of them."

[Illustration: THE PRINCE'S FIRST WORDS WERE ALSO A DISTRACTION FROM
TERRORS, AND ENCHANTMENTS WHICH MADE HER FEEL FAINT]

As he laughed his eyes rested on a man sauntering toward them from the
direction of Fifth Avenue. "I've known about two--" his eyes came back
to smile again down into hers--"or _one_." He started as a man starts
who receives a new suggestion. "I say! Let's go in and look up chicory
and succory in the encyclopedia. Then we'll know all about it. It
seems to me, too," he went on, reminiscently, "that I read a little
poem about this very blue flower--by Margaret Deland, I think it
was--only a few weeks ago. I believe I could put my hand on it. Come
along."

As he sprang up the steps the pearly gates were opening again before
Letty when the man whom Allerton had seen sauntering toward them
actually passed by. Passing he lifted his hat politely, smiled, and
said, "Good afternoon, Miss Gravely," like any other gentleman. He was
a good-looking slippery young man, with a cast in his left eye.

Because she was a woman before she was a lady, as she understood the
word lady, Letty responded with, "Good afternoon," and a little
inclination of the head. He was several doors off before she bethought
herself sufficiently to take alarm.

"Who's that?" Allerton demanded, looking down from the third or fourth
step.

"I'm sure I haven't an idea. I think he must be some camera-man who's
seen me when they've been shooting the pitch--" she made the
correction almost in time--"who's seen me when they've been shooting
the _pick-tures_. I can't think of anything else."

They watched the retreating form till, without a backward glance, it
turned into Madison Avenue.

"Come along in," Allerton called then, in a tone intended to disperse
misgiving, "and let's begin."

Ten minutes later he was reading in the library, from a big volume
open on his knees, how for over a century the chicory root had been
dried and ground in France, and used to strengthen the cheaper grades
of coffee, when Letty broke in, as if she had not been following him:

"I don't think that fella could have been a camera-man after all. No
camera-man would ha' noticed me in the great big bunch I was always
in."

"Oh, well, he can't do you an