ster of the Orient, and arrived in good time at Camden Town
station. Irene was nowhere in sight. Jenny waited half an hour. People
began to stare at the sprays of lilac in her large round hat. Really,
they were looking at the blue facets of her eyes and her delicate,
frowning eyebrows. But Jenny, feeling herself a-blush, thought it was
the lilac, thought her placket was undone, thought there was a hole in
her stocking, became thoroughly hot and self-conscious.

She waited another blushful quarter of an hour. Then, thinking that
Irene must surely have mistaken the meeting-place, she called at the
shop in Kentish Town where her father worked and asked him if he'd seen
Irene.

"Irene Dale?" said Charlie.

"Yes, you know."

"Haven't you seen her?"

"No."

"Why, she was in here asking for you. She's been waiting outside Kentish
Town Station."

"That's Mrs. Brains all over. Ta-ta!"

Jenny dashed off to Kentish Town, where she caught Irene on the verge of
departure. Most of the way to the Orient they argued which was right.

When they reached the famous theater of varieties, Irene said she was
afraid to go in.

"Who cares?" said Jenny. "If they don't want us, they won't eat us, any
way."

Monsieur Corontin, the Maitre de Ballet, interviewed them in his little
room that was hidden away at the end of one of the innumerable passages.
He looked at Jenny curiously.

"Dance, please, miss."

Jenny danced as well as she could in the diminutive room.

"Now, please, miss," he said to Irene, who also danced.

"You are engaged," said Mr. Corontin.

"Both?" asked Jenny.

"Both of you."

They lost themselves several times in the course of their descent.

"What an unnatural place," said Jenny. "Gee! How many more stairs? I
suppose we're ballet girls now."

At home that evening Charlie remonstrated with his daughter for
intruding upon him at Kentish Town.

"Don't come asking me for your flash friends," he said. "Why, the men
wondered who you were."

"Didn't they know I was your daughter?"

"I tried to pretend you wasn't, but one of 'em heard you calling me
dad."

"What did he say?"

"What did he say? He said, 'Charlie, is your daughter a---- princess?'"

"Well, you ought to have been very proud," said Jenny.

"Proud, with all the men in the shop laughing at me? Why, they'll think
I've no business to be working."

"Oh!"

"And don't you never recognize me in the street," went on Charlie.

"Why ever not