ainst rules, but I'll see the superintendent keeps your bed for you
to-night."

"Thank you," said Patsy. She waved a farewell to the staff and the
ward as she went through the door. "I don't know where I'm going or
what I shall be finding, but if it's anything worth sharing I'll send
some back to you all."

The staff watched her down the corridor to the elevator.

"Gee!" exclaimed the youngest doctor, his admiration working out to
the surface. "When she's made her name I'm going to marry her."

"Oh, are you?" The voice of the old doctor took on its habitual
tartness. "Acute touch of philanthropy, what--eh?"

Patricia O'Connell swung the hospital door behind her and stepped out
into a blaze of June sunshine. "Holy Saint Patrick! but it feels
good. Now if I could be an alley cat for two months I could get along
fine."

She cast a backward look toward the granite front of the City
Hospital and her eyes grew as blue and soft as the waters of
Killarney. "Sure, cat or human, the world's a grand place to be alive
in."

II

A SIGN-POST POINTS TO AN ADVENTURE

Marjorie Schuyler sat in her own snug little den, her toy ruby
spaniel on a cushion at her feet, her lap full of samples of white,
shimmering crepes and satins. She fingered them absent-mindedly, her
mind caught in a maze of wedding intricacies and dates, and whirled
between an ultimate choice between October and June of the following
year.

The world knew all there was to know about Marjorie Schuyler. It
could tell to a nicety who her paternal and maternal grandparents
were, back to old Peter Schuyler's time and the settling of the
Virginian Berkeleys. It could figure her income down to a paltry
hundred of the actual amount. It knew her age to the month and day.
In fact, it had kept her calendar faithfully, from her coming-out
party, through the periods of mourning for her parents and her
subsequent returns to society, through the rumors of her engagements
to half a dozen young leaders at home and abroad, down to her latest
conquest.

The last date on her calendar was the authorized announcement of her
engagement to young Burgeman. Hence the shimmering samples and the
relative values of October and June for a wedding journey.

And the world knew more than these things concerning Marjorie
Schuyler. It knew that she was beautiful, of regal bearing and
distinguished manner. An aunt lived with her, to lend dignity and
chaperonage to her position; but