FACING
PAGE

"Jamais!" _Frontispiece_

Momma was enjoying herself 36

"I expect you've seen these before" 45

Breakfast with Dicky Dod 99

"Are you paid to make faces?" 140

We followed the monks 169

Dicky shouted till the skeletons turned to listen 189

We were sitting in a narrow balcony 194

"I'm not a crowned head!" 208

"Do you see?" 256

Fervent apologies 265

"Whom _are_ you going to marry?" 322

A VOYAGE OF CONSOLATION.

CHAPTER I.

It seems inexcusable to remind the public that one has written a book.
Poppa says I ought not to feel that way about it--that he might just as
well be shy about referring to the baking soda that he himself
invented--but I do, and it is with every apology that I mention it. I
once had such a good time in England that I printed my experiences, and
at the very end of the volume it seemed necessary to admit that I was
engaged to Mr. Arthur Greenleaf Page, of Yale College, Connecticut. I
remember thinking this was indiscreet at the time, but I felt compelled
to bow to the requirements of fiction. I was my own heroine, and I had
to be disposed of. There seemed to be no alternative. I did not wish to
marry Mr. Mafferton, even for literary purposes, and Peter Corke's
suggestion, that I should cast myself overboard in mid-ocean at the mere
idea of living anywhere out of England for the future, was
autobiographically impossible even if I had felt so inclined. So I
committed the indiscretion. In order that the world might be assured
that my heroine married and lived happily ever afterwards, I took it
prematurely into my confidence regarding my intention. The thing that
occurred, as naturally and inevitably as the rain if you leave your
umbrella at home, was that within a fortnight after my return to Chicago
my engagement to Mr. Page terminated; and the even more painful
consequence is that I feel obliged on that account to refer to it again.

Even an American man has his lapses into unreasonableness. Arthur
especially encouraged the idea of my going to England on the groun