eet-one; once she bounced in, confidently, but she vetoed that,
and decided upon a dignified but cordial entrance. One more trip to the
mirror for a close inspection.

"Oh, you pretty thing!" she nodded to herself.

She set forth, as Jarvis had done, with the address on the publisher's
letter clasped in her hand. She marched uptown with a singing heart. She
saw everything and everybody. She wondered how many of them carried
happy secrets, like hers, in their thoughts--how many of them were going
toward thrilling experiences. She shot her imagination, like a
boomerang, at every passing face, in the hope of getting back secrets
that lay behind the masks. She was unaware how her direct gaze riveted
attention to her own eager face. She thought the people who smiled at
her were friendly, and she tossed them back as good as they gave. Even
when a waxed and fashionable old dandy remarked, "Good morning, my
dear," she only laughed. Naturally, he misunderstood, and fell in step
beside her.

"Are you alone?" he asked, coyly.

She gave him a direct glance and answered seriously.

"No. I am walking with my five little brothers and sisters." He looked
at her in such utter amazement that she laughed again. This time he
understood.

"Good day," said he, and right-about-faced.

She knew she had plenty of time, so she sauntered into a bookshop and
turned over the new books, thinking that maybe some day she would come
into such a shop and ask for her own books, or Jarvis's published plays.
She chatted with a clerk for a few minutes, then went back to the
avenue, like a needle to a magnet.

In and out of shops she went. She looked at hats and frocks, and touched
with envious fingers soft stuffs and laces.

"Some day," she hummed, "some day!"

She even turned in at Tiffany's seductive door. Colour was a madness
with her, and her little cries of delight over a sapphire encouraged a
young clerk to take it out of the case and lay it on the velvet square.

"Oh, it's so beautiful it hurts!" Bambi exclaimed.

He smiled at her sympathetically.

"Magnificent, isn't it? Are you interested in jewels?" he added.

"I am interested, but I am not a buyer," she admitted to him. "I adore
colour."

"Let me show you some things," he said.

"Oh, no. I mustn't take up your time."

"That's all right. I have nothing else to do just now."

So he laid before her enraptured gaze the wealth of the Indies--the
treasure baubles of a hundred que