And I don't want you to quarrel
with him."

"Why don't you?"

"Because you have said enough to make me understand that you are doing
it for my sake. That won't answer at all, you know."

"I don't see why it won't," Prime objected with sudden obtuseness.

"For the best possible reason; there is another woman to be considered.
Sooner or later she will hear that you have broken with your best friend
on account of a--a person she has never even heard of, and there will be
consequences."

"Oh, if that is all"--and then he laughed. "You are either the most
childlike bit of femininity the world has ever seen--or the most
wilfully blind, Lucetta."

"'Cousin Lucetta,'" she corrected. "We are back among the conventions,
now."

He took the implied readjustment of their relations rather hard.

"That wasn't worthy of you," he protested warmly. "We have been too much
to each other in the past month to go back of the returns in that way,
don't you think?"

"I can tell better what I think after I have climbed down into my little
groove in the girls' school," she returned half-absently, and beyond
this the talk concerned itself with their plans for the immediate
future, Prime still insisting that he meant to see his table companion
safely home and setting the difficulties and objections aside as one who
had a perfect right to do so.

When the leisurely meal was finished Prime pushed his chair back and
glanced at his watch.

"It is nearly ten o'clock," he announced. "Shall we go and meet Grider?
Or shall we give him the cold shoulder he so richly deserves and go hunt
up the railroad timetables? It is for you to say."

She decided instantly.

"I think we ought to go and hear what Mr. Grider has to say for himself.
We owe him that much for rescuing us from that terrible old Scotch
under-sheriff."

And together they sought the hotel parlors.

XXI

THE FAIRY FORTUNE

MR. WATSON GRIDER was not alone when they found him. He was sharing a
sofa in the public parlor with an elderly little gentleman whose
winter-apple face was decorated with mutton-chop whiskers and wreathed
in smiles--the smiles of a listener who has just heard a story worth
retailing at the dinner-table.

The two stood up when Prime led his companion into the room, and Grider
did the honors.

"Miss Millington, let me introduce Mr. Shellaby, an old friend of my
father's and the senior