a horrid stepmother who was so cruel that he ran away from home and had all sorts of adventures at the age when the boys I know at home would be just beginning to look forward to Eton. I had to draw the details from him, and I felt so sorry for all the poor fellow had gone through that I longed with my whole heart to do something to make up to him for his past hardships. But I haven't thought of anything yet that a girl could do, which would be really useful. The best fun of all was the Chinese restaurant where we had dinner. It's in a queer street where there are some famous pawn shops, it seems, and I wanted to go into them, but Mr. Brett wouldn't take me. To get to the restaurant you go up a long flight of marble stairs, with two grinning Chinese devil-heads, like watch dogs, on the wall at the top. Nothing could be more modern and Western than the Chicago surging and roaring outside. But as you pass the guardian devils and cross the threshold of that restaurant you turn your back on the present and find yourself in the Far East. I liked it better than Mrs. Ess Kay's gorgeous Aladdin's Cave, for there's nothing imitation or stagey about this place. There's real lacquer, and real silver and gold on the strange partitions; real Chinese mural paintings; real Chinese lamps swinging from the ceilings; real ebony stools to sit on at the inlaid octagon tables, and real ebony chopsticks to eat with if you choose, instead of commonplace knives and forks. Of course we did choose; I would be ashamed to bow to myself in the looking glass if we hadn't; and we pretended that we were making an actual tour in China as we ate strange yet delicious food such as my wildest imagination could not have conjured. I was a great princess, and Mr. Brett was my Chief Grand Marshal. He wanted to be my courier, but I wouldn't have him for anything so ignominious. I reminded him that I had counselled ambition, and I gave him for a decoration a little steel and paste button which just then came off my grey bolero where it didn't show much. He immediately pinned it under the lapel of his coat, and looked suddenly quite solemn as he said he would keep it always.