nd then Joan rose in a sort of panic. "I must go," she said nervously,
forgetting that she had grown up. "Good night, Fairy."

Tootles stood up too. "Good night, Lady-bird. Make everything come
right," and held out her hand.

Joan took it again and went forward and kissed the odd little girl who
was her friend.

And a moment later Tootles saw her disappearing into the wood, like a
spirit. When she looked up at the watching star and waved her hand, it
seemed all misty.

XII

"And now, Mr. Harley," said Grandmother Ludlow, lashing the
septuagenarian footman with one sharp look because he had spilt two or
three drops of Veuve Cliquot on the tablecloth, "tell me about the
present state of the money market."

Under his hostess's consistent courtesy and marked attentions George
Harley had been squirming during the first half of dinner. He had led
her into the fine old dining room with all the style that he could
muster and been placed, to his utter dismay, on her right. He would
infinitely rather have been commanded to dine with the Empress of
China, which he had been told was the last word in mental and physical
torture. Remembering vividly the cold and satirical scorn to which he
had been treated during his former brief and nightmare visit the old
lady's change of attitude to extreme politeness and even deference made
him feel that he was having his leg pulled. In a brand new dinner
jacket with a black tie poked under the long points of a turned-down
collar, which, in his innocence, he had accepted as the mode of
gentlemen and not, as he rightly supposed of waiters, he had done his
best to give coherent answers to a rapid fire of difficult questions.
The most uneasy man on earth, he had committed himself to statements
that he knew to be unsound, had seen his untouched plate whisked away
while he was floundering among words, and started a high temperature
beneath what he was perfectly certain was lurking mockery behind
apparently interested attention.

If any banker at that moment had overheard him describing the state of
the money market he would have won for himself a commission in the
earth's large army of unconfined lunatics.

The old sportsman, sitting with Joan on his right and his
daughter-in-law on his left, was more nearly merry and bright than any
one had seen him since the two great changes in his household. His
delight in having Joan near him again was pathetic. He had shaved for
the second tim