threaded his way among them contentedly, for he loved children and had all too little opportunity to be with them. He stood for a time and watched with much amusement a game of blind-man's-buff—colin-maillard the little beggars called it, but if the name was different, the play was the same that Paul had known in his own boyhood at Verdayne Place. [155] Many fine ships were sailing along the lake's shore, navigated by brave mariners of eight and ten. Paul had just turned away from watching one spirited race when a scream arrested his attention. At first he saw only an excited group gathered at the lake's edge, and then his eye caught sight of a tell-tale hat, floating on the surface. With a few bounds he was in the water, to emerge soon with a little limp body in his arms. He laid his burden down gently on the pebbly bank and[156] then gave place to a man who pushed his way through the crowd with the brisk professional air a doctor is wont to assume. In a few moments the sturdy enfant breathed again. [156] Paul felt anything but a hero. He had never been wetter—and moreover he had lost his hat. It would be a wonder, too, if any cocher would let him get into his carriage with the water running off him in rivulets. He was standing by the road-side bargaining with one of that tribe and had nearly exhausted his stock of dignified French when he happened to glance over his shoulder as a carriage passed close by him. Beneath a parasol a lady's face stood out clearly from the moving maze around him—her face again. The smile in her eyes made Paul mad. He thrust a twenty-franc note into the[157] hand of the astonished cocher, and springing into the cab directed the man to hurry on. [157] And then the impossibility of the situation dawned upon him. A fine sight he was! to go dashing off the Lord knew where after a lady he did not know! Such an adventure attempted by as bedraggled a cavalier as he, might easily land him in a police station. He had no relish for being dragged off by a gendarme, he reflected, and even if that should not occur, the best he could possibly manage would be to make an ass of himself. And he had been far too successful in that line once before. With the thought, his customary sober judgment returned. "L'Hôtel du Rhin!" he shouted savagely to his cocher, and
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