a similar loss myself
to understand _you._ My store of sensible remarks is copious on most
occasions--but I'm darned if I ain't dried up in the face of this! Might
I venture to ask what that venerable Chief Christian at Tadmor would say
to the predicament in which I find my young Socialist this morning?"

"What would he say?" Amelius repeated. "Just what he said when Mellicent
first came among us. 'Ah, dear me! Another of the Fallen Leaves!' I wish
I had the dear old man here to help me. _He_ would know how to restore
that poor starved, outraged, beaten creature to the happy place on God's
earth which God intended her to fill!"

Rufus abruptly took him by the hand. "You mean that?" he said.

"What else could I mean?" Amelius rejoined sharply.

"Bring her right away to breakfast at the hotel!" cried Rufus, with
every appearance of feeling infinitely relieved. "I don't say I can
supply you with the venerable Chief Christian--but I can find a woman
to fix you, who is as nigh to being an angel, barring the wings, as any
she-creature since the time of mother Eve." He knocked at the bedroom
door, turning a deaf ear to every appeal for further information which
Amelius could address to him. "Breakfast is waiting, miss!" he called
out; "and I'm bound to tell you that the temper of the cook at our hotel
is a long way on the wrong side of uncertain. Well, Amelius, this is
the age of exhibition. If there's ever an exhibition of ignorance in
the business of packing a portmanteau, you run for the Gold Medal--and a
unanimous jury will vote it, I reckon, to a young man from Tadmor. Clear
out, will you, and leave it to me."

He pulled off his coat, and conquered the difficulties of packing in
a hurry, as if he had done nothing else all his life. The landlady
herself, appearing with pitiless punctuality exactly at the expiration
of the hour, "smoothed her horrid front" in the polite and placable
presence of Rufus. He insisted on shaking hands with her; he took
pleasure in making her acquaintance; she reminded him, he did assure
her, of the lady of the captain-general of the Coolspring Branch of the
St. Vitus Commandery; and he would take the liberty to inquire whether
they were related or not. Under cover of this fashionable conversation,
Simple Sally was taken out of the room by Amelius without attracting
notice. She insisted on carrying her threadbare old clothes away with
her in the box which had contained the new dress. "I want