e, and
far more heavily than her fragile air warranted. Before he could
collect any scattered wits he may have chanced to have, she was
kneeling astride him, with a painful, grinding knee on either of his
arms, and slapping his face.

The Honourable John Ruffin walked briskly down from the sea-wall with a
smile of profound pleasure on his face. The perfumed baron had not yet
perceived his charge's plight.

Pollyooly did not smack very hard at first, for she was resisting the
wriggling of the prince; but once she had dug her toes firmly into the
sand, she gave her mind to delivering each smack with the full swing of
her arm; and the prince began to bellow. Then the baron saw the
terrible, treasonable indignity the hope of the house of
Lippe-Schweidnitz was enduring. He broke into a curious toddling run,
uttering odd, short shrieks of the last horror as he came.

The Honourable John Ruffin placed himself athwart the course of the
toddling deliverer and said quietly:

"Don't hurry, Pollyooly, but smack him hard."

A smile of understanding wreathed Pollyooly's flushed but angel face;
and she did smack him hard. The Honourable John Ruffin's back was
turned to the headlong baron; but his head was bent a little sideways;
and as the already breathless rescuer made his final spurting rush he
moved sharply to the left.

It was unfortunate (but since he had not eyes in the back of his head,
it could not be helped) that the left shoulder of the Honourable John
Ruffin, jerking upward hard, should have impinged upon the onrushing
right shoulder of the deliverer. The baron left the firm earth,
twirled in the air in a fashion which would have won him the plaudits
of the most exacting music-hall audience, came down on his back on the
sand with a violence which shook the little breath left out of his body
and lay gasping in a darkened world.

It was a full minute and a half before the bellowing of his
sufficiently besmacked charge came again, dimly, to his comprehending
ears. Then he grew aware, also dimly, that the Honourable John Ruffin
was standing over him and asking loudly, with every appearance of just
indignation, what he meant by not looking where he was going. The
baron was strongly of the opinion that the interposed shoulder had been
no accident; but he was much too busy with his breathing to say so.
Then when his breath came more easily and he had the power to say so,
he had no longer the inclination, for the