serve you--I wish you would let me be that man. I know it seems now as
if such a thing couldn't happen; but nothing's quite impossible in this
queer world, and--and anyhow I shall always be ready. You could trust
me----"

"I know that!" I couldn't resist breaking in.

"I'm--employed for the present at a club in New York. If you'd send
word to Jim Brett, at the Manhattan Club, there's nothing under the sun
that Jim Brett wouldn't do for you, from finding a lost dog, to taking
a message across the world."

"First I must catch my dog before I can lose him," I answered,
laughing. "But if I do, or--or there's anything else, I shan't forget."

"That's a true promise, then; and I have to thank you for the third
time. Now, I'm not going to trouble you any longer. Good-bye."

Without stopping to think who he was, or who I was, I held out my hand,
and his good-looking brown face grew red. He took the hand, pressed it
hard, once; dropped it abruptly; turned on his heel and walked away,
without looking back.

I was so interested in going over the conversation in my mind, that I
forgot to feel like Beau Brummel with one paw up in his glass case; and
though I daresay ten minutes had passed, it hardly seemed two, when a
wonderful little black image in the shape of a boy came sidling up to
me, all rolling white eyes, and red grin, like a nice Newfoundland
puppy. He had some newspapers tucked under his arm, but in his hand was
a small basket of peaches almost too beautiful to be real. But then,
weren't they--and wasn't he--part of my dream?

He grinned so much more that I was afraid his round black face would
break into two separate halves, and looking at me with his woolly head
on one side, he thrust out the basket.

"Fur you, missy," said he, with a funny little accent, for all the
world like Sally Woodburn's.

"They can't be for me. There must be a mistake," said I, wishing there
wasn't, for the peaches did look delicious; and there were two rosebuds
lying on top of the basket; one pink, the other white. "I don't know
anyone who could have sent them."

"The gent knows you, you bet, missy," replied the image. "He guv me a
quarter and axed if I know'd my alphabet 'nuf to find letter 'B,' an'
tote dese yere to the prettiest young lady I'd ever seed. Most wite
ladies, dey looks all jes' alike, to me, but you's different, missy;
an' I reckon de tings must be fur you."

I had a horrible vision of this compliment proceeding fr