hink how
far our manners were from civilization, wherever our heads and hearts
might be, when he heard a voice at his elbow:

"A punch with a club would start some of these fellows along quicker."

It was Stoller, and March turned from him to lose his disgust in the
sudden terror of perceiving that Miss Triscoe was no longer at his side.
Neither could he see his wife and General Triscoe, and he began to push
frantically about in the crowd looking for the girl. He had an
interminable five or ten minutes in his vain search, and he was going to
call out to her by name, when Burnamy saved him from the hopeless
absurdity by elbowing his way to him with Miss. Triscoe on his arm.

"Here she is, Mr. March," he said, as if there were nothing strange in
his having been there to find her; in fact he had followed them all from
the theatre, and at the moment he saw the party separated, and Miss
Triscoe carried off helpless in the human stream, had plunged in and
rescued her. Before March could formulate any question in his
bewilderment, Burnamy was gone again; the girl offered no explanation for
him, and March had not yet decided to ask any when he caught sight of his
wife and General Triscoe standing tiptoe in a doorway and craning their
necks upward and forward to scan the crowd in search of him and his
charge. Then he looked round at her and opened his lips to express the
astonishment that filled him, when he was aware of an ominous shining of
her eyes and trembling of her hand on his arm.

She pressed his arm nervously, and he understood her to beg him to
forbear at once all question of her and all comment on Burnamy's presence
to her father.

It would not have been just the time for either. Not only Mrs. March was
with the general, but Mrs. Adding also; she had called to them from that
place, where she was safe with Rose when she saw them eddying about in
the crowd. The general was still, expressing a gratitude which became
more pressing the more it was disclaimed; he said casually at sight of
his daughter, "Ah; you've found us, have you?" and went on talking to
Mrs. Adding, who nodded to them laughingly, and asked, "Did you see me
beckoning?"

"Look here, my dear!" March said to his wife as soon as they parted from
the rest, the general gallantly promising that his daughter and he would
see Mrs. Adding safe to her hotel, and were making their way slowly home
alone. "Did you know that Burnamy was in Carlsbad?"

"He's go