an. Take care that they do not
meet on the stairs. Take anything and everything he gives you for the
next eight-and-forty hours, interspersing his prescriptions with
frequent tumblers of hot and steaming ammoniated quinine-and-water,
getting down at the same time more beef tea, oysters, champagne,
muffins, mince-pies, oranges, nuts, and whiskey than, under ordinary
circumstances, you feel would be good for you. Continue the above
treatment for a couple of months. This is what I am going to try, if I
am down with it. As I said above, it is, if a little complicated, sure
to be all right, for I have got every item of it from a careful perusal
of those infallible guides and directors in all modern difficulties and
doubts,

THE DAILY PAPERS.

* * * * *

KICKED!

(_By the Foot of Clara Groomley._)

CHAPTER II.

I am still at Ryde, and it is still raining. On a day like this, a
little Ryde goes a great way. No Ryde without rain. _Telle est la vie._
The young girls at Plumfields sit writing themes indoors instead of
taking their exercise in the open air.

[Illustration]

If this rain keeps on, I shall go to wild Assam again, or to the Goodwin
Sands. JAMES, the headwaiter, has told me thirteen different stories of
the haunted room of this hotel. None of them are amusing, or
interesting, or have anything to do with this tale. If I were writing a
shilling volume, I should put them in by way of padding. As it is, they
may go out. I too will go out.

***

I have seen Mlle. DONNERWETTER. She was racing along on the pier, and I
was pacing along in the rear. I saw her and caught her up. I hastily
pressed all the valuables that I had with me--four postage-stamps and an
unserviceable watch-key--into her hand, and entreated her to give me an
interview with Miss SMITH.

"Me muchee want to oblige English Sahib," she said, in her pulverised
English, "but ze Effendina--ze what you call 'ead-mistress, French lady
like myself--she no like it. She give me the _bottine_, if I let great
buckra massa talk to Fraulein SMEETS. But lookee--I give you straight
tip. Miss SMEETS is on ze pier now--you write note--slip it in her hand.
I wink ze eyebrow. I have a grand envy to oblige the English Signor. Ah!
Bismillah! _Quelle alouette!_"

She is French, very French, but she has a kind heart. I hurriedly wrote
a few impassioned words on my left cuff, and folded it into a
three-cornered note. I dropped