"Men can look after themselves!" frowned her father, "and if they can't, maybe they'll get another chance, who knows? But a dog, poor little lover. All that dumb quivering [88] miracle of love, trust, shrewdness, sinew, silk. If _he_ doesn't get the chance to live out the measure of even his stingy little day----" "Yes, but Old-Dad," reasoned Daphne, "it was Creep-Mouse's own idea wasn't it--this jumping off to chase the cat?" "Hush _your_ mouth!" said Jaffrey Bretton. To cover the very real emotion that hid behind the irritability he began at once with the stub of a pencil and the back of an envelope to compose a telegram for the stranger. "Thanks," he wrote. "Please communicate any news to J. Bretton, Hotel-------" Then quite abruptly he jumped up and started after the porter. "Why, what an idiot I am!" he called back from the door way. "We don't even know the chap's name!" From under lashes that seemed extraordinarily heavy to lift Daphne glanced up a bit askance at her father. "His name is Sheridan Kaire," she said. Swinging sharply round in his tracks her father stood eyeing her with frank astonishment. [89] "Well, I'd like to know," he demanded, "how _you_ happen to know what his name is?" "He--he sent me his card," said Daphne. This time her eyelashes were quite unmistakably too heavy to lift. "At the hotel, I mean," she faltered, "three or four nights ago. He sent me orchids. He sent me candy. He sent me----" "Do you mean," said her father, "that this man has been following you for days?" "Yes," said Daphne. "And--and what did you do with these--these offerings?" asked her father. "Why, I didn't know just what to do with them," stammered Daphne. "I was so frightened--I--I gave them to the bell boy." "Do you mind telling me," quickened her father, "just why if you were frightened or troubled you wouldn't call upon your most natural protector?" Like the fluffy edges of two feather fans Daphne's lashes fringed on her cheeks. "This father and daughter game is such a new one to me," she said. "I've lived so much with boarding school girls--I--I didn't know fathers were people you told things to, I [90] thought they were people that you kept things from!" Very faintly around the tremulous young mouth, very briefly behind the dark lashes a little smile signaled. "Take off that gown!" ordered her father quite abruptly, "and wrap yourself up in that big coat of mine! And wait here till I come back!" "What time is it?" shivered Daphne. "Four o'clock," said her father and was gone. When he reappeared ten minutes later with a yellow envelope flapping in his hand Daphne was still standing just where he had left her though obediently bundled up now in the big tweed coat. "We are all idiots!" affirmed her father. "Everybody on the train is an idiot! Here's this message been stuck up in the dining car since nine o'clock last night and no one had wit enough to find us!" "Is it from--Creep-Mouse?" brightened Daphne.