from view: "Of all the Arabian Nights'
entertainments! Who am I, anyway?"

She had been drawn into the dining-room with Kersley's outstretched arms
closing around her firmly as she mechanically but ineffectually strove
to retreat, his blue eyes beaming down on her as he whispered:

"Oh, Marcia, Marcia! This comes of trying to show gratitude to
strangers. '_About to be engaged!_' Accepting a honeymoon cottage before
you'd accepted the man!"

MR. CARTERET AND HIS FELLOW AMERICANS ABROAD[6]

BY DAVID GRAY

"It must have been highly interesting," observed Mrs. Archie Brawle; "so
much pleasanter than a concert."

"Rather!" replied Lord Frederic. "It was ripping!"

Mrs. Ascott-Smith turned to Mr. Carteret. She had been listening to Lord
Frederic Westcote, who had just come down from town where he had seen
the Wild West show. "Is it so?" she asked. "Have you ever seen them?" By
"them" she meant the Indians.

Mr. Carteret nodded.

"It seems so odd," continued Mrs. Archie Brawle, "that they should ride
without saddles. Is it a pose?"

"No, I fancy not," replied Lord Frederic.

"They must get very tired without stirrups," insisted Mrs. Archie. "But
perhaps they never ride very long at a time."

"That is possible," said Lord Frederic doubtfully. "They are only on
about twenty minutes in the show."

Mr. Pringle, the curate, who had happened in to pay his monthly call
upon Mrs. Ascott-Smith, took advantage of the pause. "Of course, I am no
horseman," he began apprehensively, "and I have never seen the red
Indians, either in their native wilds or in a show, but I have read not
a little about them, and I have gathered that they almost live on
horseback."

Major Hammerslea reached toward the tea table for another muffin and
hemmed. "It is a very different thing," he said with heavy
impressiveness. "It is a very different thing."

The curate looked expectant, as if believing that his remarks were going
to be noticed. But nothing was further from the Major's mind.

"What is so very different?" inquired Mrs. Ascott-Smith, after a pause
had made it clear that the Major had ignored Pringle.

"It is one thing, my dear Madame, to ride a stunted, half-starved pony,
as you say 'bareback,' and another thing to ride a conditioned British
Hunter (he pronounced it huntaw) without a saddle. I must say that the
latter is an impossibility." The oracle came to an end and the material
Major began on the muffin.

There was