"Dear daddy," smiled Katharine, without a trace of bitterness. "Could any one be more economical for other people, and more extravagant for himself? I wonder if that is what makes me love him so? But, oh, what would I give for that thirty shillings!" She counted her little store for the twentieth time, and sat thinking. Doubtless she had spent her money injudiciously at first; but the fact remained that, if she went on at her present rate of expenditure, she would have to return home in a fortnight. If she went without her midday meal, and economised in every possible way, she might manage to remain another month. "That is what I must do," she said. "That will bring me to the middle of March, and I shall have been in London just nine weeks. And, after all, the food is so nasty that I sha'n't mind much. Besides, it is really very romantic to starve a little." It grew less romantic as another fortnight went by. The food had never seemed less nasty than it did now; and she had to take long walks at dinner time to escape the appetising smell of the hot dishes. She had never realised before what a very healthy appetite she possessed; and she remembered with some regret how she had been too dainty, at first, to touch the food at all, and had lived for days almost entirely on bread and butter. But now she would have eaten any of it with a relish,--even a certain dish which was said to be stewed rabbit, but which she had derisively termed "a cat in a pie dish." One day, she read an alluring advertisement of a new agency. She had lost her faith in agencies, and she had no more money for fees; but at least it was an object for a walk, and anything was better than waiting indoors for something to happen. To be idle in a place like Queen's Crescent was not an enviable position. And by this time she knew her London pretty well, and it fascinated her, and spoke to her of life, and work, and the future; and a walk through any part of it was always exhilarating. As she turned into the park at the Marble Arch, a carriage and pair rumbled out with two well-dressed women in it. Katharine stopped and looked after it, with an amused smile on her face. "My aunt and cousin," she murmured aloud. "What would they say, if they knew? And once they came to stay with us, and they worried daddy no end, and said I wanted finishing, and ought to go to Paris! It seems to me that life is always a comedy, but sometimes it drops into a roaring farce!" And pleased with the appositeness of her own remark, she continued her walk in better spirits than her worldly condition would seem to justify. The agency turned out to be on the top floor of some flats near Parliament Street; and the porter looked curiously at her as he took her up in the lift. "Agency, miss? So they says, I'm told. Don't believe in agencies much myself, I don't; queerish kind of impostory places, I calls 'em. Don't you let yourself be took in, missy!"