The two new friends left the subway and crossed the park to that glade where the little girl had made the acquaintance of the pale lady the day before. Early as was the hour in the afternoon there were already many babies with their nurses and carriages about the benches bordering the walks. "Of course," Carolyn May said, "we don't have to look for a carriage. The pale lady won't have any, for it was all smashed. There! It was right down yonder that Princey and I found the pale lady. Oh! There she is!" "Where? Are you sure?" asked Bassett, feeling rather embarrassed. This was his first attempt at such an interview as Mr. Cameron had proposed. Suppose the "pale lady" should resent it? Carolyn May was pointing eagerly down the path to a woman sitting with a baby in her lap, alone on a bench. The little girl might have started off on a run to greet her friend the next moment, had not Bassett detained her. "Wait!" he said, dropping a restraining hand upon her shoulder. He had paled; now he flushed warmly. "Wait! Let me speak to her first, Carolyn. Are you sure that is the lady of the accident?" [Illustration: "_Wait--let me speak to her first, Carolyn!_"] "Why, of _course_!" declared the child confidently. "Don't you see she has no go-cart? And how pale she is? And how thin the baby is? Of course I know her!" "Wait here, Carolyn," said Bassett, a strange tremour in his voice. "I want to speak to the--er--the lady alone." Carolyn May, not altogether pleased, and somewhat puzzled as well, watched the tall young man approach the pale lady. Bassett stood between the child and her friend when the latter first looked up and observed his approach. What she said, how she looked, or how Bassett looked and what he said, the little girl had no means of knowing. But what followed quickly filled Carolyn's small heart with trouble and her usually sunny face began to cloud over. The pale lady rose from the bench with her baby. She and Bassett seemed to be talking very earnestly together. They began to move slowly down the walk--quite in the opposite direction from that point where Carolyn May stood, as she had been told to stand. Disobedience was not one of her sins. A lump rose in her throat. Salt tears stung the child's eyelids. She beheld the pale lady and Mr. Bassett walk quite out of sight, and neither of them turned to look at her! Of course Carolyn knew her way home. Mr. Bassett must know that, too, for this was the spot where her adventure had occurred the previous afternoon. He had been assigned to interview the pale lady and get her story; he was not supposed to act as nursemaid for Carolyn May. But the latter felt very much hurt. Neither the pale lady nor Mr. Bassett had asked her to join them! She wanted to hear all about it. She wanted to see how the pale lady would look when she was given the twenty dollar bank note for a new baby carriage.