ast.

Dick picked up the limp little body, and made his way to the couch
where he deposited it gently among the stiff red pillows there. Then
he began to chafe her hands, to push back the tumbled hair from which
the fur hat had been displaced, and finally fallen off, and to call
out her name remorsefully.

"Betty, dear, dearest," he cried, "I didn't know, I didn't dream,--I
thought you were just trying it on. I'm so sorry, dear, I am so
sorry."

She moaned softly, and he bent over her again more closely. Then he
gathered her up in his arms.

"Betty, dear, Betty," he said again.

She opened her eyes. Her two soft arms stole up around his neck, and
she lifted her lips.

"You little devil," Dick cried, almost at the same instant that he
kissed her.

"She deserves to be spanked," he told Billy grimly at the door. "She
got in my apartment when I was out, and insisted on staying there till
I came in, to make me a visit."

"He doesn't understand me," Betty complained, as she cuddled
confidingly in the corner of the taxi-cab, "when I'm serious he
doesn't realize or appreciate it, and he doesn't understand the nature
of my practical jokes."

"I don't like--practical jokes," Dick said. "Have you seen Preston
Eustace, Billy?"

"I haven't seen Caroline," Billy said, as if that disposed of all the
interrogatory remarks that might be addressed to him in the present or
the future.

"It's a nice-looking river," Betty said, looking out at the softly
gleaming surface of the Hudson, as their cab took the drive. "It looks
strange to-night, though, laden with all kinds of queer little boats.
I wonder how it would feel to be drifting down it, or up it, on a
barque or a barkentine--I don't know what a barkentine is--all dead
like Elaine or Ophelia,--with your hands neatly folded across your
breast?"

"For heaven sake's, Betty," Billy cried, "I don't like your style of
conversation. I'm in a state of gloom myself, to-night."

"I didn't say I was in a state of gloom," Betty said. They rode the
rest of the way in silence, but when Dick got out of the cab to open
her door for her, she whispered to him, "I'm awfully ashamed, Dick,"
before she fled up-stairs through the darkened hallway of her own
home.

"Queer little thing,--Betty," Billy said as Dick stepped back to the
cab again, "you never know where you have her. Full of the deuce as
she can stick. Unscrupulous little rascal, too, but made of good
stuff."

"Don't you th