ld, French-heels and hair-pins.

At the foot of a flight of steps the party paused to buy tickets.

"You can wait for us here, Miss Lucy," said Floss.

Miss Lucinda protested eagerly that she was not too tired to go with
them. The prospect of being left alone again nerved her to climb to any
height.

"But," cried Floss, "if you get up there, there's only one way to come
down. You have to--"

"Let her come!" interrupted the others in laughing chorus, and, to Miss
Lucinda's great relief, she was allowed to pass through the little gate.

When she reached the top of the long stairs, she looked about for the
attraction. A wide inclined plane slanted down to the ground floor, and
on it were bumps of various sizes and shapes, all of a shining
smoothness. She had a vague idea that it was a mammoth map for the
blind, until she saw Dick and Floss sit down at the top and go sliding
to the bottom.

"Come on, Miss Lucinda!" cried May. "You can't get down any other way,
you know. Look out! Here I go!"

One by one the others followed, and Miss Lucinda could not distinguish
them as they merged in the laughing crowd at the base.

Delay was fatal; they would lose her again if she hesitated. In
desperation she gathered her skirts about her, and let herself
cautiously down on the floor. For one awful moment terror paralyzed her,
then, grasping her skirts with one hand and her hat with the other and
closing her eyes, she slid.

Miss Lucinda did not "hump the bumps"; she slid gracefully around them,
describing fanciful curves and loops in her airy flight. When she
arrived in a confused bunch on the cushioned platform below, she was
greeted with a burst of applause.

"Ain't it great?" cried Floss, straightening Miss Lucinda's hat and
trying to get her to open her eyes. "Dick says you are the gamest
chaperon he ever saw. Sit up and let me pin your collar straight."

But Miss Lucinda's sense of direction had evidently been disturbed, for
she did not yet know which was up, and which was down. She leaned limply
against Floss and tried to get her breath.

"Excuse me," said a man's voice above her, "but are either of you
ladies Mrs. Lura Doring?"

The effect was electrical. Miss Lucinda sat bolt upright and stared
madly about. Tom Speckert had told her to be sure to answer to that
name. It would get him into trouble if she failed to do so.

"Yes, yes," she gasped; "I am Mrs. Lura Doring."

The members of her little party looked