and teeth and the other items, all doing team-work together, and
then if she was trim and slender--"

"Should she be slender?" interrupted Kalora, leaning toward him.

"Sure. I don't mean the same width all the way up and down, like an art
student, but trim and--Here, I'll show you. You will find the pictures
of the most beautiful women in the world right here in the ads of a
ten-cent magazine. Look them over and you will understand what I mean."

He turned page after page and showed her the tapering goddesses of the
straight front, the tooth-powder, the camera, the breakfast-food, the
massage-cream, and the hair-tonic.

"These are what you call beautiful women?" she asked.

"These are about the limit."

"Then in your country I would not be considered hideous, would I?"

"Hideous? Say, if you ever walked up Fifth Avenue you would block the
traffic! And in the palm-garden at the Waldorf--why, you and the head
waiter would own the place! Are you trying to string me by asking such
questions? Are you a real ingenue, or a kidder?"

"I hardly know what you mean, but I assure you that here in Morovenia
they laugh at me because I am not fat."

"This is a shine country, and you're in wrong, little girl," said Mr.
Pike, in a kindly tone. "Why don't you duck?"

"Duck?"

"Leave here and hunt up some of the red spots on the map. You know what
I mean--away to the bright lights! I don't like to knock your native
land but, honestly, Morovenia is a bad boy. I've struck towns around
here where you couldn't buy illustrated post-cards. They take in the
sidewalks at nine o'clock every night. That orchestra down at the hotel
handed me a new coon song last night--_Bill Bailey_! Can you beat that?
As long as you stay here you are hooked up with a funeral."

Kalora, with wrinkled brow, had been striving to follow him in his
figurative flights.

"Strange," she murmured. "You are the second person I have met to-day
who advises me to go away--to the west."

"That's the tip!" he exclaimed with fervor. "Go west and when you start,
keep on going. You come to America and bring along the papers to show
that you're a real live princess and you'll own both sides of the
street. We'll show you more real excitement in two weeks than you'll
see around here if you live to be a hundred."

"I should like to go, but--Look! Hurry, please! You must go!"

She pointed, and young Mr. Pike turned to see two guards in baggy
uniforms bearing down upo