ffairs, which she had begun
to believe she was not managing any too well. They had talked in low
voices so that the shopkeeper could only have heard fragments of their
conversation, and then left the shop, without even a word of
explanation to the irritated old money-lender.

Mr. Arnold hailed a taxi-cab, and they rolled off in state. Mr. Arnold
had given the driver the address of a little French restaurant on West
Forty-fifth Street.

"It'll be fairly empty now, and we can find just the table we want.
_I_ shall order your luncheon for you, because I know just exactly what
things are peculiar to this place--their special tid-bits, and I feel
like ordering a regular knock-out of a feast as a sort of celebration.
Really, you've no idea how delighted I am to have discovered you." His
frank, boyish pleasure in this freak of chance was so plainly written
on his beaming face, that Nancy colored with a schoolgirl's naive
delight in such sincere flattery. The dreaded undertaking of her trip
to the city was turning into a very charming little surprise party. In
some way, she felt that she had known Mr. Arnold for a very long time,
and that really there was not the slightest need for concealing
anything from him. His odd, attractive face was so friendly, his
bright brown eyes so full of eager sympathetic interest, that almost
before she had given a second thought as to whether she should or she
shouldn't, she had begun to tell him the reason for her appearance at
the pawnbroker's.

They had found a little table in a corner of the restaurant, and Mr.
Arnold had insisted upon ordering almost everything on the menu that
attracted his fancy.

"And above all things, you must try the hot chocolate, Miss Prescott.
I suppose it's not manly, but I have the most juvenile fondness for hot
chocolate, with great big blobs of whipped cream."

So hot chocolate they had, and innumerable rolls, hot and fresh from
the oven, and various and sundry other delicacies, calculated to
cripple a weak digestion for a month at the very least.

Drawn out by her growing confidence in him, and by her craving to talk
out her troubles to some one whose advice would be sound and based on
genuine sympathy, Nancy told him about her necessity for getting some
money. The explanation involved a good many complications, and Nancy
was as a rule unusually reserved. But Mr. Arnold was one of those
rather rare people who can understand a great deal more than