y half-shoes and jerked on the
first things at hand. "Thing to do now is to keep that child's mind
from being distressed. She'll have a good sleep and get off early in the
morning on the Albany boat. Don't suppose she'd understand,
anyhow--sweet, innocent, unsophisticated thing like that. What a fool
Billings is!"

And I jammed in savagely the turquoise matrix pin with which I was
replacing the pearl, because it went better with my tie.

"Now, just a few minutes of conversation to put her at her ease," I
reflected, "and then I'm off. I'll get the janitor's wife to come up and
stay near her."

And I dashed back, murmuring some jolly rubbish of apology. And then I
just brought up speechless--almost fell over backward. For as she stood
there under the light, I saw that what I had taken for a dress of black
silk was not a dress at all, but a suit of pajamas--black, filmy
pajamas, whose loose elegance concealed but could not wholly deny the
goddess-like figure within.

"I'd have known you anywhere, Mr. Lightnut." And then I found that we
were shaking hands, my fingers crushed in a grasp I never could have
thought possible from that tiny hand. "From hearing Jack talk, your name
is a sort of household word in the Billings family."

I mumbled something jolly idiotic--some acknowledgment. But I was pink
about the ears, and I knew it, while she was cool and serene as a lily
of the what-you-call-it, don't you know. I was trying not to see the
pajamas, trying to pretend not to notice them, but dashed if I didn't
only make it worse!

For she looked down at herself with a laugh--rather an embarrassed
laugh, I thought; and her little shrug and glance directed attention to
her attire.

"I see you're looking at the pajamas," she said smiling.

And her eyes looked at me through those drooping lashes--oh, such a way!

"Oh, no--I assure--certainly not," I stammered hastily. Dash it, I never
was so rebuked and mortified in all my life. What an ass I had been to
seem to notice at all!

She looked troubled. "Say, do you mind my wearing them?" she inquired.

"I? Certainly not--well, I should say not!" I retorted, almost with
indignation.

"Sure?" By Jove, what ripping eyes she had!

"Of course not!" emphatically.

Her sunny head nodded satisfaction. "That's all right, then. I was
afraid you wouldn't like it--afraid you would think I was acting a
little _free_. But your man Jenkins--isn't that his name?--said he
thought you w