a white fur coat, a pair of roller skates, an Indian costume, a
beaded pocketbook, with a blue cat embroidered on it, a parchesi board
to play parchesi with her Uncle Dick, some doll's dinner dishes, a
boy's bicycle, some parlor golf sticks, a red leather writing set, a
doll's manicure set, a sailor-boy paper doll, a dozen small suede
animals in a box, a drawing book and crayon pencils and several other
trifles of a like nature. The things she did not want she rejected
unerringly. It pleased Nancy to realize that she knew exactly what she
did want, even though her range of taste was so extensive. Nancy had a
sheaf of her own cards with her address on them in her pocketbook, and
each time Sheila saw the thing her heart coveted Nancy nodded to the
saleswoman and whispered to her to send it to the address given and
charge to her account.

They took their lunch in a famous confectionary shop, full of candy
animals and alluring striped candy sticks and baskets. Here Sheila's
eye was taken by a basket of spun sugar flowers, which she insisted on
buying for Gaspard. By the time they were ready to resume their
shopping tour, Sheila began to show signs of fag, so they bought only
brooches for the waitresses, and the watch as thin and exquisite of
workmanship as a man's pocket watch could be, for Collier Pratt.

"I think we had better give it to him now, Miss Dear," Sheila decided.
"I don't see how he can wait till Christmas for it--it is so
beautiful. He has not had a gold watch since that time in Paris when
we had all that trouble."

"What trouble, Sheila dear?" Nancy said. She had tucked the child in a
hansom, and they were driving slowly through the lower end of Central
Park to restore Sheila's roses before she was exhibited to her
parent.

"When we lost all our money, and my father and some one I must not
speak of, had those dreadful quarrelings, and we ran away. I do not
like to think of it. My father does not like to think of it."

"Well, then, you mustn't, dear," Nancy said, "but just be glad it is
all over now. I don't like to realize that so many hard things
happened to you and him before I knew you, but I do like to think that
I can perhaps prevent them ever happening to you again."

She closed resolutely that department of her mind that had begun to
occupy itself with conjectures concerning the past of the man to whom
she had given her heart. The child's words conjured up nightmare
scenes of unknown panic and d