a
nurse to relieve her. He was beginning to grow desperate about Mary and
me--said we neither of us had a moment to waste on him--and yet could
not find a nurse whom we felt we could afford. And yesterday a young
woman walked into his office to put an advertisement in his paper for
just such a position as we had to offer. She is a German, wants to learn
English, and she will be here this afternoon."

"Perhaps your little girl resented her coming," he suggested vaguely.
"Perhaps that was the reason."

"Mary resentful!" laughed Mrs. Buckley.

"She doesn't, bless her gentle little heart, know the meaning of the
word. Besides which we haven't told her about the girl, as we are rather
looking forward to that first interview, and wondering how Mary will
acquit herself in a conversational Waterloo. She can't, you know, make
life miserable and information bitter to a German who speaks no
English. 'Ja' or 'nein' alternately and interchangeably may baffle even
her skill in questioning."

Mary, meanwhile, was hurrying along the way to Camelot. She had not
planned the expedition in advance. Rather, it was the inevitable
reaction toward license which marks the success of any revolution. She
had cast off the bonds of the baby carriage, her time and her life were
her own, and the road stretched white and straight toward Camelot.

It was afternoon and the sun was near its setting when at last she
reached the towered city and found it in all ways delightful but in some
surprising. She was prepared for the moat and for the drawbridge across
it, but not for the exceeding dirtiness of its water and the dinginess
of its barges. She had expected it to be wider and perhaps cleaner, and
the castles struck her as being ill-adapted to resist siege and the
shocks of war since nearly all their walls were windows. And through
these windows she caught glimpses of the strangest interiors which ever
palaces boasted. Miles and acres of bare wooden tables stood under the
shade of straight iron trees. From the trees black ribbons depended. In
the treetops there were wheels and shining iron bars, and all about the
tables there were other iron bars and bolts and bands of greasy leather.

"I don't see a round table anywhere," she reflected. "What do you s'pose
they do with all those little square ones?" She sought the answer to
this question through many a dirty pane and many a high-walled street.
But the palaces and the streets were empty and the ex