ptiness. Webster's stagger
had carried him almost up to the green baize door leading to the
servants' staircase, and he proceeded to pass through it without
checking his momentum, closely followed by Smith who, now convinced that
interesting events were in progress which might possibly culminate in
cake, had abandoned the idea of sleep, and meant to see the thing
through. He gambolled in Webster's wake up the stairs and along the
passage leading to the latter's room, and only paused when the door was
brusquely shut in his face. Upon which he sat down to think the thing
over. He was in no hurry. The night was before him, promising, as far as
he could judge from the way it had opened, excellent entertainment.

Mrs. Hignett had listened fearfully to the uncouth noises from the hall.
The burglars--she had now discovered that there were at least two of
them--appeared to be actually romping. The situation had grown beyond
her handling. If this troupe of terpsichorean marauders was to be
dislodged she must have assistance. It was man's work. She made a brave
dash through the hall mercifully unmolested; found the stairs; raced up
them; and fell through the doorway of her son Eustace's bedroom like a
spent Marathon runner staggering past the winning-post.

Sec. 2

At about the moment when Mrs. Hignett was crunching the gravel of the
drive, Eustace was lying in bed, listening to Jane Hubbard as she told
the story of how an alligator had once got into her tent while she was
camping on the banks of the Issawassi River in Central Africa. Ever
since he had become ill, it had been the large-hearted girl's kindly
practice to soothe him to rest with some such narrative from her
energetic past.

"And what happened then?" asked Eustace, breathlessly.

He had raised himself on one elbow in his bed. His eyes shone excitedly
from a face which was almost the exact shape of an Association football;
for he had reached the stage of mumps when the patient begins to swell
as though somebody were inflating him with a bicycle-pump.

"Oh, I jabbed him in the eye with a pair of nail-scissors, and he went
away!" said Jane Hubbard.

"You know, you're wonderful!" cried Eustace. "Simply wonderful!"

Jane Hubbard flushed a little beneath her tan. She loved his pretty
enthusiasm. He was so genuinely stirred by what were to her the merest
commonplaces of life.

"Why, if an alligator got into _my_ tent," said Eustace, "I simply
wouldn't know what