men excused
themselves. Bojo never felt quite comfortable under the scrutiny of the
mother's menacing lorgnette. She was a frail, uneasy little woman, who
dressed too young for her age, whose ready tears had won down the
opposition of her husband, much as the steady drip of a tiny rivulet
bores its way through granite surfaces. She did not approve of Bojo--a
fact of which he was well aware--and was resolved when her first
ambition had been gratified by Dolly's coming marriage to turn her
forces on Doris.

At present she was too much occupied, for there were weak moments when
Dolly, for all her foreign education, rose up in revolt, and others when
Mr. Drake, incensed at the cold-blooded conduct of the pre-nuptial
business arrangements, had threatened to send the whole pack of impudent
lawyers flying. Patsie had been packed off on a visit to a cousin after
a series of indiscretions, culminating in a demand to know from the Duke
what the French meant by a _mariage de convenance_--a request which fell
like a bombshell in a sudden silence of the family dinner.

It was a week before the wedding, as Bojo was swinging up the Avenue
past the Park on his way to Doris, that he suddenly became aware of a
young lady in white fur cap and black velvets skipping toward him,
pursued by a terrier that had a familiar air, while from the attendant
automobile a tall and scrawny spinster was gesticulating violently and
unheeded. The next moment Patsie had run up to him, her arm through his,
Romp leaning against him in recognition, while she exclaimed:

"Bojo, thank Heaven! Save me from this awful woman!"

"What's wrong, what's the matter?" he said, laughing, feeling all at
once a delightful glow at the sight of her snapping eyes and breathless,
parted lips.

"They've brought me back and tied a dragon to me," she cried
indignantly. "I won't stand it. I won't go parading up and down with a
keeper, just like an animal in a zoo. It's all mother's doings, and
Dolly's, because I miffed her old duke. Send the dragon away, please,
Bojo, please."

"What's her name?" he said, with an eye to the approaching car.

"Mlle. du Something or other--how do I know?"

The frantic companion now bearing down, with the chauffeur set to a
grin, Bojo explained his right to act as Miss Drina's escort, and the
matter was adjusted by the _demoiselle de compagnie_ promising to keep a
block behind until they neared home.

Patsie waxed indignant. "Wait till I g