"Good gracious! You don't want to marry an agree-er, do you? Mrs. Barlow's one. Everything her husband thinks, she thinks, too, and sometimes he can't stand her another minute. Where are you going now?" "I'm going to telephone for a taxi-cab. Then I'm going home to change my clothes and get a hat, and then I'm going to my office to look after some matters there; then I'm going with you to do some shopping, and then I'm going to the Green Tea-pot to meet Miss Barbour. If you could go with me now it would save time. Can you go?" "If I can tell Father first. Wait for me, will you?" Around the corner Carmencita flew, and was back as the taxi-cab stopped at Mother McNeil's door. Getting in, she sat upright and shut her eyes. Van Landing was saying good-by and expressing proper appreciation and mentally making notes of other forms of expression to be made later; and as she waited her breath came in long, delicious gasps through her half-parted lips. Presently she stooped over and pinched her legs. "My legs," she said, "same ones. And my cheeks and my hair"--the latter was pulled with vigor--"and my feet and my hands--all me, and in a taxi-cab going Christmas shopping and maybe to a marriage, and I didn't know he was living last week! Father says I mustn't speak to people I don't know, but how can you know them if you don't speak? I was born lucky, and I'm so glad I'm living that if I was a rooster I'd crow. Oh, Mr. Van, are you ready?" The next few hours to Carmencita were the coming true of dreams that had long been denied, and from one thrill to another she passed in a delicious ecstasy which made pinching of some part of her body continually necessary. While Van Landing dressed she waited in his library, wandering in wide-eyed awe and on tiptoe from one part of the room to the other, touching here and there with the tips of her fingers a book or picture or piece of furniture, and presently in front of a footstool she knelt down and closed her eyes. Quickly, however, she opened them and, with head on the side, looked around and listened. This wasn't a time to be seen. The silence assuring, she again shut her eyes very tight and the palms of her hands, uplifted, were pressed together. "Please, dear God, I just want to thank you," she began. "It's awful sudden and unexpected having a day like this, and I don't guess to-morrow will be much, not a turkey Christmas or anything like that, but to-day is grand. I'd say more, but some one is coming. Amen." And with a scramble she was on her feet, the stool behind her, as Van Landing came in the room.