hout me
paying till after--and you got to lend me two dollars."

"Sure thing," said Lenny, with a manner of laying the entire railway
system at her feet.

"Seventeen" would rather not have stopped at Warbleton, but Lenny's
signal was law on the time card, and the magnificent yellow express
slowed down for Lulu. Hatless and in her blue cotton gown, she climbed
aboard.

Then her old inefficiency seized upon her. What was she going to do?
Millton! She had been there but once, years ago--how could she ever
find anybody? Why had she not stayed in Warbleton and asked the sheriff
or somebody--no, not the sheriff. Cornish, perhaps. Oh, and Dwight and
Ina were going to be angry now! And Di--little Di. As Lulu thought of
her she began to cry. She said to herself that she had taught Di to
sew.

In sight of Millton, Lulu was seized with trembling and physical nausea.
She had never been alone in any unfamiliar town. She put her hands to
her hair and for the first time realized her rolled-up sleeves. She was
pulling down these sleeves when the conductor came through the train.

"Could you tell me," she said timidly, "the name of the principal hotel
in Millton?"

Ninian had asked this as they neared Savannah, Georgia.

The conductor looked curiously at her.

"Why, the Hess House," he said. "Wasn't you expecting anybody to meet
you?" he asked, kindly.

"No," said Lulu, "but I'm going to find my folks--" Her voice trailed
away.

"Beats all," thought the conductor, using his utility formula for the
universe.

In Millton Lulu's inquiry for the Hess House produced no consternation.
Nobody paid any attention to her. She was almost certainly taken to be a
new servant there.

"You stop feeling so!" she said to herself angrily at the lobby
entrance. "Ain't you been to that big hotel in Savannah, Georgia?"

The Hess House, Millton, had a tradition of its own to maintain, it
seemed, and they sent her to the rear basement door. She obeyed meekly,
but she lost a good deal of time before she found herself at the end of
the office desk. It was still longer before any one attended her.

"Please, sir!" she burst out. "See if Di Deacon has put her name on your
book."

Her appeal was tremendous, compelling. The young clerk listened to her,
showed her where to look in the register. When only strange names and
strange writing presented themselves there, he said:

"Tried the parlour?"

And directed her kindly and with his thumb, and