"I'm just as crazy to tell you as you are to hear it," responded Carol. "Do you think _I_ haven't been boiling with impatience all day? Well, here goes! Susette, it's the queerest thing in the world, the way I happened across this. It's all through Miss Cullingford. That day, after I'd described the picture to her as well as I could, I remember that she looked puzzled and said, 'That somehow sounds familiar to me.' But I didn't think anything of the remark at the time, because I was too interested in what she was going to say about my poem, and I soon forgot it. But yesterday, when I went to her after school, she asked me if I'd recognize the picture if I saw it again, and I said that of course I would. Then she suddenly drew a book out of her desk and opened it at a certain page. And, Sue, will you believe me when I tell you? There was a copy of that _very same picture_, right before my eyes!" "Well, for goodness sake, tell me who it was, or I'll die of curiosity!" cried Sue impatiently. "That's just what I don't know," Carol answered. "But I have the book here. It belongs to Miss Cullingford, and she offered to lend it to me. Of course, when I saw it, I acted surprised, but not half as much so as I felt, because I didn't want to have to tell her anything about Louis. I only said that it seemed to be the same picture, and she said it must have been some copy that I'd seen, for the portrait was a famous one, painted by a famous artist. Then she went on to criticize my poem, and made one or two suggestions about some little changes in it. She said that if I made them, she thought the poem stood a fair chance of winning the prize. Then she offered to lend me the book to take home and read, because she thought I might be interested in it. She little knew how _desperately_ interested I was! But come! Let's look at it for ourselves, and see if we can find out anything we'd like to know." Carol took the book out of a desk where she had locked it, and opened it at a certain page. And there, staring right up at them, was the selfsame picture that hung in Monsieur's room,--the "boy of nut-brown hair and smiling eyes." Only of course the picture was in black and white, not colored as in the oil-painting. But it was the _same_; you couldn't mistake it. And underneath the portrait it said, "The Dauphin of France." "Carol," said Sue, after she'd read it, "will you tell me what on earth a 'dauphin' is?" "I haven't the faintest idea," answered the other. "I never heard the word before, and I haven't had a chance to look it up anywhere. It looks something like the word 'dolphin.' Perhaps it's the French for it. And yet I don't think that is likely. A dolphin is some kind of a sea-creature, like a porpoise, isn't it? So it _couldn't_ have any such meaning here." "But what is this book?" asked Sue.