pe from me; she might be in the dark corner of that smart
carriage flying northward; even the slender figure coming toward me
through the yellow gloom, with her muff pressed against her face to
guard it from the November wind, might be she. And when on the next
afternoon--by chance, it seemed, as by chance it seems all our lives
are ordered--when at last by the same modiste's shop the same smart
brougham drew up at the curb, the same haughty footman opened the door,
and I saw the very same blue wings, I knew that I had found Penelope at
last and I spoke without fear.

She asked me what I had been doing all these years. I laughed
joyfully, but I did not tell her. For all these years I had been
working for this moment!

"What have I been doing?" I said. "Why, Penelope, it would take me
forever to tell you."

"You must begin telling me right now," she returned quickly. "You must
walk home with me to tea and I can hear all about it as we go. To me
it seems just yesterday since we went fishing in the meadow. Mrs.
Bannister won't mind driving back alone--will you, Mrs. Bannister?"

Mrs. Bannister did mind it very much. She was, I learned afterward,
introducing Miss Blight to the right people, and it was a violation of
her contract with Rufus Blight to allow his niece to walk in the public
eye with a man who might not be the kind of a person Miss Blight should
be seen with at a time when her whole future depended on her following
the narrow way which leads to the social heaven. Of course she would
not mind driving home alone, but what about the hats? Mr. Malcolm
would pardon her mentioning such intimate domestic matters, but Miss
Blight had been away all summer and had not a hat of any kind fit to be
seen in.

"Bother the hats!" said Miss Blight.

She laid a hand on her chaperon's arm and pushed her gently into the
carriage. Mrs. Bannister made feeble protests. Penelope was the most
wilful girl she had ever seen and knew perfectly well that she had not
a thing to wear to the Perkins tea; if she had to go home she objected
to being arrested this way and clapped into a prison van. The last was
hurled at us as the footman was closing the door, and when Mrs.
Bannister fell back in the seat, angry and silent, the Pomeranian
projected his head from the window and snapped at us.

"Mrs. Bannister is a good soul," Penelope said when, side by side, we
were away on that wonderful walk uptown. "She has to be properly