Light dawned upon Archie. "Mrs. Neal! Not _her_?" He knew that the One and Only sometimes dropped in to take tea with her old servant, a goddess descending to mortals; but he had never been lucky enough to catch her in the act. "Yes, it is," replied Ellen, who needed no niceties of grammar to realize the identity of Archibald's "her." "So now will you hurry?" He hurried; but once in the hall he paused in the grip of a daring idea. Success had rather gone to his head. "Say! _Who's going to see her home?_" Ellen tossed her head. "Me, of course. You don't suppose I was going to let the child go off through them dark streets all by herself?" "They _are_ dark streets," he said earnestly. "Very dark streets! Murders happen in them, frequently. Pickpockets; rats!--Really, Mrs. Neal, two women alone would hardly be safe in them." "Perhaps I'd better get me a policeman, then!" She shook her head grimly, torn between affection for her new charge and devotion to her old. "Look here, Mr. Archie, there's no use hangin' around like you been doing lately. Oh, I know! You can't fool me. I was born with eyes all over me, I was, like that critter in the antiquarium at the Fair--You're a real nice young fellow, but a girl like Joan Darcy wouldn't so much as look at you. She's proud, proud as the queen's cat. And her pa's prouder still. They'd just as lief walk over you to their kerridge (which it's an automobile) as if you was Sir Thingumbob's coat in the history book." "Fortunate coat," murmured Archie, grasping the allusion. "But who's asking her to look at me, Mrs. Neal? I'd rather she wouldn't, really! I'd much rather look at her. When you come right down to it, I'm sort of proud myself!--But if I just happened to be at the front door when you start out," he wheedled, "you wouldn't really object to my simply--well, to my merely--" "Making a fool of yourself? Go as far's you like!" interrupted Ellen tartly, closing her door in his face. So it chanced that as Joan stood at the threshold sometime later waiting for Ellen to follow downstairs, making an unconscious picture in her sweeping hat and her soft furs between the graceful pillars of the lintel, Mr. Blair appeared nonchalantly before her. And the effect of the encounter was so great that, intending to lift his hat and toss away his cigarette with a Chesterfieldian carelessness, he instead tossed his hat and lifted his cigarette,--a catastrophe that robbed him for the moment of the powers of speech and motion. He had not expected to follow out Ellen's program quite so literally. Joan's training stood her in good stead. Her lips twitched but remained in control. The elaborateness of his surprise, together with Ellen's rather guilty countenance, had already informed her that she was the victim of a plot, into which she walked obligingly.