d plunged him.

"The fairy princess," she repeated slowly and quite seriously. "Sure
enough, there should be one." She gazed at him appraisingly:
"Young--moderately young and good-looking enough. You haven't got
fat, And all that tan is becoming, and--how are you off anyway,
Bobby?"

He looked down at her amusedly. "The fairy princess would never ask
that question."

"Oh, yes, she would. Do not dream that she wouldn't--to-day."

"Very well, then. To be perfectly truthful, I have 'opes. I believe I
have found my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yes, I do. Oh,
it's nothing very definite yet, but I believe, I truly believe I've
struck it."

"How?" she asked curiously.

"Ah, my dear, I'm not quite ready to tell. It's a romance, as you
will agree when you hear it. What's the matter?"

For Kitty instead of showing any proper, cousinly enthusiasm was
looking at him with a frown of petulant vexation.

"Then why couldn't you have come home six months, even three months
earlier? Young, good-looking, and, as I now discover, rich, or about
to be. Oh, it is too bad!"

He gazed at her in amazement. "My dear Kitty," in playful humility,
"even if your flattering estimate of me is true, I don't see why you
should be so disgruntled about it."

Her April face broke into smiles, and yet she sighed. "Oh, Bobby,
because, because I'm afraid the fairy princess is bespoke. Yes,"
nodding at his astonishment, "I have a fairy princess in mind, one in
whose welfare I am deeply interested."

"Oh," comprehendingly, "one of your protegees, whom you are trying to
marry off. I assure you once and for all, Kitty, that such will not
do for me. I want the real thing in fairy princesses; under an
enchantment, detained in the home of a wicked ogre; all that, you
know, and lovely and forlorn."

She looked at him oddly. "If you only knew how you confirm my
impression."

"Of what?"

She paid no attention to him. "I wish I knew certainly. She won't
tell until she gets ready, but it looks very much as if she were
engaged to Wilfred Ames. You remember him, do you not?"

Hayden thought deeply a moment. "A big fellow? Very light hair, blue
eyes?"

"Yes, yes," she nodded, "'the flanneled fool at the wicket, muddied
oaf at the goal' type, you know. One of those lumbering, good-looking
babies of men that women like Marcia always attract. Every one thinks
it's an awfully good thing, and I dare say I'd agree with them, if
you hadn't happened