"It certainly is a ring tailed dandy," she admitted musically. "You aren't Mr. Leland, are you?" Dart laughed too, his amusement apparently as genuine as hers, and entirely unabashed by the unconcealed appraisal of her glance at him. "You're joshing," he retorted, coming closer so that while he could look at her he could turn his coat tails to the fire. "There's as much difference between me and my old pal Mart as there is between you and a picture of a little country girl picking buttercups." "You don't think I look the part?" she smiled. "You?" He favoured her with the full measure of his supreme impudence as he looked her over. "You're just built to play the queen's part in a tragedy show on Broadway. After the first night there'd be just one theatre doing business." She frowned quickly, her eyes darkening as they had when she struck with her whip at her tired horse. Then she shrugged her shoulders and laughed again. "You're very flattering," she said in a way which made Dart look at her sharply and which for a very brief time left him a little uncertain. "Me?" he said. "You wrong me, lady. Honest you do. I'm sired by a gentleman who was a Baptist minister and who instilled in his only son if you lie once you'll do it some more and then you'll get caught. Say, seeing Wanda ain't here to do the knockdown stunt, I'm Dart, Mr. Willie Dart, to command." He bobbed her a bow, accompanied the ceremony with a little flap of the coat tails, and all the while did not shift his round, inquisitive eyes from her face. "Being acquainted now," he went on when a little pause assured him that she was not going to respond with an exchange of names, "just make yourself to home, won't you? I'll duck in and tell Wanda you're here. And," merely as an afterthought, "what name will I say, lady?" "Don't bother," she replied coolly. "She knows I'm here." "Does she? She hasn't been expecting you, has she?" "No." Miss Hazleton's interest in the little man had evidently died a sudden death, and her one concern now seemed to get herself warm and dry. "She's one great little kid, Wanda is, ain't she?" he ran on, totally unaffected by the significance of the young woman's back whose graceful curves were not lost to his admiring eyes. "If you say so she must be," came the calm answer. "I never saw her before to-day." "And you don't know old Mart?" She did not know Wanda, he surmised, she had wondered if he were Leland, then it must be Mrs. Leland she had come to see. "Say," he continued, "maybe Wanda couldn't find Mamma Leland! I'll just slip in and break the news. Gee, won't she be tickled to see you, you coming unexpected like this?" "Really, Mr. Dart," she told him crisply, "you needn't take the trouble. Mrs. Leland wouldn't be the least bit glad to see me as she doesn't know me. And if you haven't discovered the fact already I might as well tell you that I am eminently capable of managing my own affairs."