ing Kate on to the high step.
Suddenly, however, Timmy's covered basket flew open. Kate had been playing
with the cat, and had forgotten to fasten Tim in. Resenting the confusion,
Timmy made a leap, Kate screamed and jumped down from the stage, carrying
not only the cat's basket, but a small dressing-bag of Angela's--all she
had brought, except a suit-case containing a dress or two for the journey.
Some one else had, of course, scrambled into the coveted seat so
miraculously vacated, and the stage, with its full complement of
passengers, went swinging down the road, with Kate and Timmy and the
dressing-bag left behind.

"Shall we try to stop?" Nick began; but Angela cut him short, her face now
as determined as those of the square-chinned girls who had passed
triumphantly on their way. "No!" she said. "I can't go through that again!
Kate will have to come on later."

"There'll be another 'Sentinel' stage in about an hour, I guess,"
announced the good-natured driver. "She'll be all right."

"She knows where we're going," said Angela. "She's a quick-witted girl,
and I shan't worry. I mean to be happy in spite of everything--and
_because_ of everything!"

So the stage rolled on into the gate of the Yosemite and Kate remained on
the veranda of the hotel at El Portal, consoling herself, when she had
retrieved Timmy, by looking at the pictures in the _Illustrated London
News_, an old number of a fortnight or three weeks ago. She found it so
interesting and absorbing, one page in particular, that when the next
coach bound for the Sentinel Hotel came along, she forgot to fight for a
place until it was too late to fight. There was not another stage bound
for that destination until to-morrow. And to-morrow Mrs. May and Hilliard
were going on somewhere else. Kate could not remember where.

Seeing her dismay, the manager of the hotel took pity on the pretty Irish
girl. "Never mind," said he. "You can 'phone from here to the Sentinel.
When your lady arrives there this afternoon, she'll find your message and
know what's happened. Then she can 'phone back what she wants you to do."

"But I won't get to her to-night, will I?" wailed Kate.

"No, you won't get to her to-night," he echoed. "But I guess she ain't so
helpless she can't do up her back hair without you, is she?"

"Her blouse buttons up behind," Kate murmured, as one murmurs in a painful
dream. "And, oh, by the powers, if I haven't got her nightgown in this
dressing-bag