alcome let him go, and paced the grass, clutching off
his hat and pounding at a knee with it.

"Oh, what has happened! What has happened!" Mrs. Balcome rocked in
her misery. "Oh, and we had words last night--bitter words! Oh!"

At this juncture, out from between the drawing-room curtains Henry
appeared, balancing himself on his middle, and handed down still
another package. Ikey ran to receive it, and as if to silence the
mourning with which the Close resounded, hastened to thrust the package
into the lap of the unhappy lady on the bench.

The result was to increase Mrs. Balcome's sorrow. "Oh, my poor
Hattie!" she wept. "My poor child!" She pulled at the cord about the
bundle, and Balcome halted behind her to look on. "Here is another
gift for her wedding! Oh, how pitiful! How pitiful! A present from
someone who loves her! Who thought the dear child would be happy!
Something sweet and dainty"--the wrapping paper was torn off by
now--"to brighten her new home! Something----"

A cover came off. And there, full in Mrs. Balcome's sight, lay a
good-sized, and very rosy Kewpie--blessed with little raiment but many
charms.

"Baa-a-a-ah!"--a gesture of disgust, and the Kewpie was cast upon the
lawn.

Wallace came hurrying from the house. He looked more bent than usual,
and if possible more pale. His clothes indicated that he had slept in
them.

Balcome charged toward him. "Where's my daughter?" he asked, with a
head-to-foot look, much as if he suspicioned the younger man with
having Hattie concealed somewhere about him.

"Wallace!" Mrs. Balcome held out stout arms to the newcomer.

Wallace went to her. "I tried and tried to telephone her," he
answered. "And they told me they don't know where she is. So I've
come.--Oh, is it all right? What does she say? I want to see her!"

"She's gone!" informed Balcome, his voice hollow.

"She's gone! She's gone!" echoed Mrs. Balcome. She shook the stone
bench.

"_Gone?_" Wallace clapped a hand to his forehead.

"She's wandered away!" sobbed Mrs. Balcome. "Half-crazed with it all!
Heart-broken! Heart-broken!"

With a muffled growl, Balcome once more fell upon Ikey, who had been
watching and listening from a discreet distance. "Where is Miss Milo,
I say!" he demanded as he swooped.

But Ikey's determination did not fail him, though his teeth chattered.
"I--I--d-d-don't know!" he protested for the tenth time.

"Oh, terrible! Terrible!"--this i