ing, before I fell asleep, what in the world I'd do
in this big city if you didn't come."

He forgot to withdraw his arm, so occupied was he by my predicament.

"What would you do, my child, if you had--had missed your--your father?"

Wasn't it clumsy of him? He wanted to break it to me gently, and this
was the best he could do.

"What would I do?" I gasped indignantly. "Why, daddy, imagine me
alone, and--and without money! Why--why, how can you--"

"There! there!" he said, patting me soothingly on the shoulder.

That baby of a Bishop! The very thought of Nancy Olden out alone in
the streets was too much for him.

He had put his free hand into his pocket and had just taken out a bill
and was trying to plan a way to offer it to me and reveal the fact to
poor, modest little Nance Olden that he was not her own daddy, when an
awful thing happened.

We had got up street as far as the opera-house, when we were caught in
the jam of carriages in front; the last afternoon opera of the season
was just over. I was so busy thinking what would be my next move that
I didn't notice much outside--and I didn't want to move, Tom, not a
bit. Playing the Bishop's daughter in a trailing coat of red, trimmed
with chinchilla, is just your Nancy's graft. But the dear little
Bishop gave a jump that almost knocked the roof off the carriage,
pulled his arm from behind me and dropped the ten-dollar bill he held
as though it burned him. It fell in my lap. I jammed it into my coat
pocket. Where is it now? Just you wait, Tom Dorgan, and you'll find
out.

I followed the Bishop's eyes. His face was scarlet now. Right next to
our carriage--mine and the Bishop's--there was another; not quite so
fat and heavy and big, but smart, I tell you, with the silver harness
jangling and the horses arching their backs under their blue-cloth
jackets monogrammed in leather. All the same, I couldn't see anything
to cause a loving father to let go his onliest daughter in such a
hurry, till the old lady inside bent forward again and gave us another
look.

Her face told it then. It was a big, smooth face, with
accordion-plaited chins. Her hair was white and her nose was curved,
and the pearls in her big ears brought out every ugly spot on her face.
Her lips were thin, and her neck, hung with diamonds, looked like a bed
with bolsters and pillows piled high, and her eyes--oh, Tom, her eyes!
They were little and very gray, and they bored their way