"I—wish you wouldn’t!" he muttered so gravely that she stopped laughing. "Well, I won’t!" she said. "I’m quite sure there’s nothing nice going to happen anywhere or any time, and it’ll be all the more a surprise, won’t it? Oh, Ted, I didn’t mean it," she added remorsefully. "It was all fun, all smoke—" "’There’s no smoke without a fire,’" Denis told the ceiling. "Mine was pipe smoke," she rejoined. Ted still looked worried. His good nights were absent. When he had gone, Nell observed thoughtfully:— "I wonder what it is! Oh, I hope we won’t have to wait long!" *CHAPTER XXXII* Down the stairs flew Nell, out into the street, up to a banana barrow, a boy, and a puppy. "Could you lend him to me for a while?" The boy eyed her suspiciously. There was not much ground for suspicion, since it was hardly likely she could be contemplating theft; the puppy, though fascinating, was obviously incapable of proclaiming what breed he was intended by nature to represent. Moreover Nell, in a long pinafore and hatless, could scarcely run away with him. It was merely from force of habit that the boy eyed her suspiciously. The puppy was more discerning. He welcomed her as a long and ardently looked for friend; he turned ecstatic somersaults over her feet; then stood up, and tore at her pinafore with wild, soft little paws. She picked him up. "May I have him? I want to paint him." The owner of the bananas, for whom the boy and the puppy were waiting, reappeared. He was quite a gallant gentleman, and assured Nell he would be pleased to let her have the puppy for "a _h_our, miss," he said with a good deal of effect. "And in a _h_our I shall be back this way, and will fetch ’im if convenient." Nell smuggled the puppy into the house and up to the Stronghold beneath her pinafore. He started the _h_our by persisting in looking upon Kate Kearney as a butt, provided by Providence, for his especial benefit. He thought her a tremendously funny joke and the more K.K. aired her dignity, the funnier he thought her. He rolled over in uncontrollable mirth, kicking up impertinent little legs right beneath her nose; he turned somersaults over her staid body; he frisked up to her in ridiculous boxing attitudes; he slapped her face, and he jeeringly incited her over and over again to "come on." But K.K. refused to "come on." She was furiously jealous of the unaristocratic little mongrel who had suddenly invaded her precincts. She took refuge in a hurt dignity; she turned her head away at his approach with an unmistakable suggestion. The puppy was not hurt; he had, together with his dirt and his plebeian origin, a useful thick-skinned philosophy.