r! Maybe she's there already!"

"The worst of it is," said my new friend--I felt he was that--"I haven't
got the ten pounds on me. I meant to have anything I might decide to buy
sent home and paid for at my hotel."

"Can't I go with you to your hotel, and you give me the money there?" I
wanted to know. "You see, I'm in such a hurry about the dress."

He glanced at me with a funny look in his eyes, and somehow I read what
it meant. _He_ hadn't called me a "little girl," and had behaved as
respectfully as if I were a hundred; but I could see that he thought me
about twelve or thirteen; and now he was saying to himself: "No harm
carting a child like that about without a chaperon."

This was the first time I'd ever been glad that I had sacrificed myself
for Di, and come to London in my old frocks up to the tops of my boots,
and my hair hanging in two tails down to my waist. Of course, if any one
were caddish or cattish enough to look her up in the book, it could be
found out at a glance that Lady Diana O'Malley was twenty-three; but
even if a person is a cad or a cat, he (or she) is often too lazy to go
through the dull pages of Debrett or Burke; and besides, there is seldom
one of the books handy. Therefore, Di had a sporting chance of being
taken for eighteen, the sweet conventional age of a debutante on her
presentation. Every one did know, however, that Father had married
twice, and that there must be a difference of five or six years between
Diana and the chocolate child. Accordingly, if I could be induced to
look thirteen at most, it would be useful. As for me, I hadn't cared
particularly. I knew I shouldn't get any grown-up fun in London, whether
my hair were in a tail or a twist, or whether my dresses were short or
long. Sometimes I had been sorry for beginning in that way, but now I
saw that virtue was going to be rewarded.

"All right," said my friend. "Maybe it will be the best arrangement."
And we left Nebuchadnezzar looking as the dog in the fable must have
looked, when he snapped at the reflected bit of meat in the water and
lost the bit in his mouth.

A taxi was passing, and stopped at the flourish of a cane. I jumped in
before I could be helped. The man followed; and though I was looking
forward only to a little fun, my very first adventure in London "on my
own," the chauffeur was speeding us along a road that didn't stop at the
Waldorf Hotel: it was a road which would carry us both on and on, toward
a