'
The bobby on hour beat, 'e told me, an' Hi 'yn't fergot a mite. T,
haych, he, hay, t, r, he, spells 'show.' 'E told me that, too. Hi
'yn't one as would _st'y_ hignorant, Hi 'yn't."

"Fer Gawd's sake!" said the officer, entirely nonplussed by this
display of the girl's erudition. "Say--well--now--come here, Bill!" He
beckoned to another man in blue and shiny buttons. "Spell them words
ag'in, Miss, won't you?" he implored.

Anna looked at him reproachfully. "No, no," she said, and made him
feel ashamed with her big eyes, "please, sir, not. It is not
funny--not for us. Please, please do not send our M'riarrr back to
England. It was her love which brought her with us. Real love. You
would not punish any one for being truly loving, eh?"

Subdued and made, again, uneasy by her lovely eyes, the man did not
complete the exposition of the joke to the newcomer, but took refuge
in an attitude of most regretful, but impregnable officialism. "I
ain't got a word to say about it, Miss," he hurried to assure the
eyes. "Law's law, and law says that the likes of her has got to be
sent back. The only way that you could keep her here would be to put
up bonds to guarantee th' gover'ment against her goin' on th' town or
anything like that."

She did not understand him in the least. "What is it that you mean?"
she asked.

Laboriously he made things clear to her, Herr Kreutzer helping and
coming to an understanding just before she did.

"Ach!" said the old flute-player, "We cannot. We have not so much."

"Sure. I know that," the man replied. "That is why I say th' girl has
got to be sent back."

Argument proved unavailing, and, ten minutes later, poor M'riar,
screaming as if red-hot irons were begrilling her most tender spots,
was being led into the "pen."

"We'll keep her here a while," the man explained, as he endeavored to
avoid the child's astonishingly skilful and astonishingly painful
kicks. "Maybe you can find somebody to go bond for her. There ain't no
other way. There really ain't, Miss."

During all this speech he still was under the strong influence of
Anna's wondrous eyes, else he would never have been able to articulate
with such unruffled calm. His charge was doing agonizing things to his
official shins, and even pinching him just over the short ribs on his
left side with a forefinger and a thumb which showed amazing strength
and malice quite infernal.

Anna and her father turned away, perforce, to attend to thei