t business assignment, his search for a
place to lunch, or--Miss Winthrop. Until that moment he had not
thought of her himself.

A singing team made their appearance and began to sing sentimental
ballads concerned with apple blossoms in Normandy. Don's thoughts
went back, strangely enough, to the white-tiled restaurant in the
alley. He smiled as he contrived a possible title for a popular song
of this same nature. "The White-Tiled Restaurant in the Alley" it
might read, and it might have something to do with "Sally."
Perhaps Miss Winthrop's first name was Sally--it fitted her well
enough. She had been funny about that chocolate eclair. And she had
lent him two dollars. Unusual incident, that! He wondered where she
was to-night--where she went after she left the office at night.
Perhaps she was here. He leaned forward to look at the faces of people
in the audience. Then the singing stopped, and a group of Japanese
acrobats occupied the stage.

Frances turned, suppressing a yawn.

"I suppose one of them will hang by his teeth in a minute," she
observed. "I wish he wouldn't. It makes me ache."

"It is always possible to leave," he suggested.

"But Mother so enjoys the pictures."

"Then, by all means, let's stay."

"They always put them at the end. Oh, dear me, I don't think I shall
ever come again."

"I enjoyed the singing," he confessed.

"Oh, Don, it was horrible!"

"Still, that song about the restaurant in the alley--"

"The _what?_" she exclaimed.

"Wasn't it that or was it apple blossoms? Anyhow, it was good."

"Of course there's no great difference between restaurants in alleys
and apple blossoms in Normandy!" she commented.

"Not so much as you'd think," he smiled.

It was eleven before they were back at the house. Then Stuyvesant
wanted a rarebit and Frances made it, so that it was after one before
Don reached his own home.

Not until Nora, in obedience to a note he had left downstairs for her,
called him at seven-thirty the next morning did Don realize he had
kept rather late hours for a business man. Bit by bit, the events of
yesterday came back to him; and in the midst of it, quite the central
figure, stood Miss Winthrop. It was as if she were warning him not to
be late. He jumped from bed.

But, even at that, it was a quarter-past eight before he came
downstairs. Nora was anxiously waiting for him.

"You did not order breakfast, sir," she reminded him.

"Why, that's so," he admitted.