“Look here, Lily!” he said, earnestly. “I’m in the deuce of a hurry just now. If you’ll wait here, I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

“I will be a good baby!” said she. “But I want my dindin!”

He could have torn his hair. He could not fail Amy now. And he could not leave a good baby alone and hungry, for he did not know how long.

“Shall I take it to the house?” he thought. “The cook would feed it. But—perhaps it’s another of these damned mysteries. I haven’t time to think it out now. I’d better keep it here until I’ve thought a bit. See here, Lily, what do you eat?”

“Dindin,” Lily answered.

“Yes, I know. But—I’ve got bread. Will that do?”

“I like bread and thugar!” she agreed.

He hurried into the kitchen, cut four good, sturdy slices of bread, covered them well with butter and sugar, and brought them back on a plate. Then, with a vague memory of a puppy he had once had, he thought of water, and brought a glassful.

“Now I’ve got to go, Lily,” he explained. “But I’ll come back as soon as I can. You just wait, see?”

“I will!” she said, pleasantly, and held out her arms.

He hesitated for a moment, half frightened; then he caught up the funny little doll and kissed its cheek.

It was not a doll. It was warm and alive, and solider than it looked. It clung to him, and kissed him back again.

XI

“You won’t feel the cold the first winter in the States.”

That was what people in Manila and Porto Rico had told Ross. He thought of those people now. You didn’t feel it, did you? Yes, you did!

He had found “some place where he could hide and watch the front door”; a plantation of firs halfway between the house and the gates. He had been there more than an hour, prowling up and down behind the screen of branches; he had at first tried to smoke, but darkness and cold annihilated any sort of zest in the tobacco. He had attempted the army setting-up exercises, considerably hampered by his overcoat; 

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