"Wait, my dear, I'm going to tell you all about it. The Count's a socialist, too. He says he is--but you mustn't tell that; he told me in the strictest confidence. Well, the Count's to go as courtier of the court of--what's the name of that old king or emperor, or whatever he was, that conquered that country--you know what I mean----" "No, indeed, I do not--and I haven't the least idea what you are talking about." "Oh! pshaw! I know perfectly well, and you do, too. The Count bet me I'd forget it and I bet him a gold cigar-holder I wouldn't--what _is_ his name? Won't the Count look handsome with lace ruffles and gold braid all over his chest and coat-tails, and a cocked hat. He's been showing me the way they dance in his country. I almost died laughing over it--only it makes me so dizzy, they never reverse--just whirl and whirl and whirl. You know he's a real count? Yes, my father's taken the trouble to hunt that up. He said he wasn't 'going to let a d----d dago come around me without anybody knowing who or what he is.' Ain't that like Pa?" "I--I--don't think I ever met your father," said Eleanor stiffly. "Oh! that's a fact. Well, 'tis--'tis just exactly like him. As soon as the Count began to come around our house--a good deal--I mean, really, quite a good deal--you understand?" said the girl, tossing her blonde head, "what must Pa do but go to work and hunt him up. He thinks Jim Canter is a winner, but I tell him Jimmy's bespoke." She looked at her hostess archly. "What did he find out?" inquired Miss Leigh coldly, "and how did he do it?" "Why, he just ran him down," explained the girl easily, "just as he does anybody he wants to know about--put a man on him, you know." "Oh! I see." Miss Leigh froze up a little; but the other girl did not notice it. "Only this one was somebody on the other side, of course, and he found out that he's all right. He's a real count. He's the third son of Count Pushkin, who was--let me see--a counsellor of his emperor, the Emperor of Sweden." "I didn't know they had an emperor in Sweden. He's a new one." "Haven't they? Oh! well, maybe it was the King of Sweden, or the Emperor of Russia--I don't know--they are all alike to me. I never could keep them apart, even at Miss de Pense's. I only know he's a real count, and I won a hundred dollars from Pa on a bet that he was. And he hated to pay it! He bet that he was a cook or a barber. And I bet he wasn't. And, oh! you know it's an awfully good joke on him--for he was a waiter in New York for a while." "A what?" "A waiter--oh, just for a little while after he came over--before his remittances arrived. But I made Pa pay up, because he said cook or barber. I put it in this hat, see, ain't it a wonder?" She turned herself around before a mirror and admired her hat which was, indeed as Miss Leigh was forced to admit, "a wonder."