ghter. One arched and smiling eye showed above the muff and
the whole figure was instinct with Bacchanalian mirth. "Why that's," he
began to explain, but young Trevor had vanished into the crowd.

Presently the cab with the smart youth inside drew up to the curb and
Sedyard, with a new self-consciousness, put his arm around the blue
figure and trundled her across the sidewalk. The cabman threw his rug
across his horse's quarters and lumbered down to assist at the
embarkation of so fair a passenger. The smart youth held the door
encouragingly open and John proceeded, with much more strength than he
had expected to use, to heave the passenger aboard.

Even these preliminaries had attracted the nucleus of a crowd and the
smart youth grew restive.

"Aw, say Maudie," he urged when the lady stuck rigid catty-cornerwise
across the cab with her blue feathers pressed against the roof in one
corner, and her bird-cage skirt arrangement protruding beyond the
door-sill. "Aw, say Maudie, set down, why don't you, and take your
Trilbys in. This gent is going to take you carriage riding."

"What's the matter with her anyway," demanded the cabman. "Don't she
know how to set in a carriage?"

"No, she doesn't, she's only a wax figure," said John, "but I bought
her and now I'm determined to take her home. She'd better go up on the
box with you."

"What! her?" demanded the outraged Jehu. "Say, what do you take me for
anyway? Do you suppose I ain't got no friends just 'cause I drive a cab?
Why! I wouldn't drive up Broadway with them goo-goo eyes settin' beside
me, not for nothing you could offer, I wouldn't."

By this time the crowd had reached very respectable proportions although
there was nothing to see except the end of a blue gown hanging out of
the cab's open door. The sharp youth, the cabman and John took turns in
trying to adjust the lady to her environment. The rigidity and fragility
of her arms and head made this very difficult, and presently there
rolled upon the scene a policeman, large, Irish and chivalrous. It took
Patrolman McDonogh but a second, but one glance at the tableaux and one
whisper from the crowd to understand that a kidnapping atrocity was in
progress.

With wrath in his eye, he shouldered aside Sedyard and the cabman,
grabbed the smart youth, whose turn at persuasion was then on, and threw
him into the face of the crowd.

"Oh! but you're the villyans," he admonished them, and then addressed
the captive m