"What a queer way to put it! 'On Mr. Walker's register.' Isn't it your real name?"

"There! I was sure you would say that. Why not be content with blunt and honest-sounding Bob?"

"Shall we establish a sort of cousinship? You're Bob and I'm Meg."

"That would be a most excellent beginning, Meg."

She laughed delightedly.

"We're having quite an adventure!" she cried. "It sounds like a chapter out of an exciting novel. I hope you didn't think I was rude about your other name—the long one—Bob! You see, I used to be Meg Garth, but now I'm Meg Ogilvey. I'm hardly accustomed to the Ogilvey yet, but I rather like it. Don't you?"

Armathwaite's face darkened, and he swallowed a piece of bacon without giving it even one of the twenty-nine bites recommended by dietists as a minimum.

"Why, that makes you look at me black as thunder," she vowed. "It's a quite simple matter. My people came into some money when we left Elmdale, and the Ogilvey was part of the legacy. It reaches us from the maternal side of the family, and the change was easy enough for dad, because he always wrote under the pen-name of Stephen Ogilvey."

"Stephen Ogilvey—the man who is an authority on folk-lore?"

The genuine surprise in his voice evidently pleased his hearer.

"Yes. How thrilling that you should recognize him! That is real fame, isn't it?—to be regarded as top-dog in your particular line. But you seemed to be angry when I told you about it."

"I thought you were married," he said, secretly quaking at his own temerity.

Again she knitted her brows in a rather fascinating effort to appear sagacious.

"I don't quite see——" she began. Then she stopped suddenly.

"You think that if I were married I wouldn't be quite such a tom-boy—is that it?" she went on.

"No. You've failed so badly in your interpretation of my thought that I dare hardly tell you its true meaning."

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