“I know I’m not pretty.  That’s why I have to be so painfully sweet.  I got the engagement only by a few extra inches.  Luckily it isn’t the face matters so much,” she chattered on.  “I thought it was.  But it’s legs; their being long; Mme. Nadine engages on that and your figure being right for the dresses of the year.  So many pretty girls come in short or odd lengths, you find, when they have to be measured by the yard, at bargain price.”

Peter laughed.

“You’re not meant to laugh there,” she said.  “It’s a solemn fact.”

“But you always laugh.”

“That’s because I’m what you’d call ‘up against’ life.  It gives me such a funny point of view.”

“That’s part of what I want to talk about.  Please don’t keep trying to turn the subject.  Unless you think I have no business seizing the first chance when I find you alone, to—–­”

“It isn’t that,” said Win.  “I think you’re very kind to take the slightest interest.  But really there is nothing to tell.  Just the usual sort of thing.”

“It doesn’t seem exactly usual to me for a girl about nineteen years old—­”

“Twenty!”

“—­to be leaving home alone and starting for a new country.”

“Not alone.  Mme. Nadine might be furious if she were spoken of as my chaperon; but she is, all the same.  Not that an emigrant needs a chaperon.”

“You an emigrant!”

“Well, what else am I?”

“I’ve been thinking of you as a dryad.”

“A poor, drenched dryad, thousands of miles from her native woods.  Do you know, my veil is soaked?”

“I’ll get you a sou’wester hat to-morrow.”

“Does the barber keep them as well as Balm of Gilead?”

“No, but my sister does.  She keeps one.  And she doesn’t want it.  I shall annex it.”

“Oh!  I couldn’t take it!”

“If you don’t, I’ll throw it overboard.”

“Were the chocolates hers?”

“Yes.”

“And the books?”

“Some were mine.  But not the ones Miss Devereux says are pretty.  Look here, Miss Child, another thing she says is that you are not with Nadine as a permanence.  What does that mean, if you don’t much mind my asking?”

“Not what you think.  I’m not going to be discharged.  I was engaged only for the voyage, to take the place of a prettier girl with still longer legs who fell through at the last moment—­literally.  She stepped into one of those gas-hole places in the street.  And I stepped into her shoes—­lucky shoes!—­sort of seven-league ones, bringing me across the sea, all the way to New York free, for nothing.  No!  I hope not for nothing.  I hope it is to make my fortune.”

“I hope so, too,” said Peter gravely.  “Got any friends there besides me?”

“Thanks for putting it so, Mr. Balm of Gilead.  Why, I’ve heard that everybody in America is ready to be a friend to lonely strangers!”