much indiscreet adoration. It was just like
Philip Crewe, this marrying on probabilities; and it was equally like
the rest of them to accept the state of affairs as an excellent joke,
and regard the result as an exquisite piece of pleasantry. 'Toinette
herself was only another careless, unworldly addition to the family
circle, and enjoyed her position as thoroughly as the rest did; and as
to Tod, what a delicate satire upon responsibilities Tod was, and how
tranquilly he comported himself under a _regime_ which admitted of free
access into dangerous places, and a lack of personal restraint which
allowed him all the joys the infantile mind can revel in!

At Dolly's exclamation Toinette rushed at him in his stronghold, and
extricated him from the coal-box with demonstrations of dismay.

"Look at his white dress!" she wailed pathetically. "I only put it on a
few minutes ago; and he has eaten two dozen fusees, if this was n't an
empty box when he found it. I hope they won't disagree with him, Phil."

"They won't," said Phil, composedly. "Nothing does. Dust him, and
proceed to business. I want to hear the rest of Dolly's story."

"I _think_," said Mollie, "that he ate Shem and Ham this morning, for I
could only find Japheth after he had been playing with his Noah's Ark.
Go on, Dolly."

"Wait until I have taken off my things," said Dolly, "and then we 'll
talk it over. We must talk it over, you know, if I am to go."

She took off her hat, and then laid her shawl aside,--a little scarlet
shawl, draped about her figure and tossed over one shoulder smartly,
and by no means ungracefully,--and so stood revealed; and it must be
admitted she was well worth looking at. Not a beauty, but a fresh,
wholesome little body, with a real complexion, an abundance of hair,
and large-irised, wide-awake eyes, changeable as to color, because
capricious in expression; the sort of girl, in fact, who would be likely
to persuade people ultimately that, considering circumstances, absolute
beauty could be easily dispensed with, and, upon the whole, would rather
detract from the general charm of novelty, which, in her case, reigned
supreme.

"It is n't the mere fact of being a beauty that makes women popular,"
she would say; "it's the being able to persuade people that you are
one,--or better than one. Don't some historians tell us that Cleopatra
had red hair and questionable eyes, and yet she managed to blind the
world so completely, that no one