s earnestly begging for an explanation. At last she
had succeeded in freezing him.

"I'm afraid I didn't quite understand," he said in a new tone which
she had not heard before. Mr. Balm of Gilead, _alias_ Peter Pan, had
suddenly grown up, and as Peter Rolls, Jr., was all politeness and
conventionality.

"I do understand now, though. Well, Miss Child, I must--thank that
'cinema' for some very pleasant hours. Here comes a man to look at
your baggage. Just remind him that you're a British subject, and he
won't make you any trouble. Neither will I!" Peter's hat was off, but
his smile could have been knocked off only with a hammer.

"Good-bye," replied Win hastily, frightened at her own appalling
success as a basilisk. "And thank _you_--for your part of the cinema."

"I'm afraid I don't deserve any credit. Good-bye. And good luck."

He was gone--but no, not quite. Without turning round to look at her
again, he was stopping to speak with the Irish-faced servant of the
customs. The latter nodded and even touched his cap. Peter Rolls
certainly had a way with him. But Win already knew this, to her
sorrow. She was _glad_ she had thought of that horrid speech about the
cinema. The man deserved it.

"That's the last I shall see of him!" she said to herself almost
viciously, as the Irish-American official spied upon her toque the
wing of a fowl domesticated since the ark. Yet for the second time
Peter came back, stiffly lifting his hat.

"I only wanted to say," he explained, "that, cinema or no cinema, I
hope, if I can be of service now or later, you will allow me the
privilege. My address---"

"I have your _sister's_, thank you," she cut his words short as with a
pair of scissors. "That's the same thing, isn't it?"

"Yes," he answered heavily--perhaps guiltily. And this time he was
gone for good.

"What a neat expression," thought Winifred. "Gone for good!"

It sounded like a long time.

CHAPTER VI

THE HANDS WITH THE RINGS

Peter Rolls, Jr., unlike his father, had practically no talent for
revenge. In common with every warm-blooded creature lower than the
angels, he could be fiercely vindictive for a minute or two--long
enough, when a small boy, to give a bloody nose and to get one; long
enough, at all ages, to want to hit a man, thoroughly smash him,
perhaps, or even to kick him into the middle of next week; long enough
to feel that he would like to make a woman sorry that she had been
rude.

But the