all the curiosity and hesitation about it, as Dicky remarked, of the animals when Noah introduced them to the Ark.  I asked Dicky to describe the diligence for the purpose of this volume, thinking that it might, here and there, have a reader who had never seen one, and he said that, as soon as he had made up his mind whether it was most like a triumphal chariot in a circus procession or a boudoir car in an ambulance, he would; but then his eyes wandered to Isabel, who was pinker than ever in the mountain air, and his reasoning faculties left him.  A small German with a very red nose, most incoherent in his apparel—­he might have been a Baron or again a hair-dresser—­already occupied one of the seats in the interieur, so after our elders had been safely deposited beside him the banquette and the coupe were left, as Mrs. Portheris said, to the adventurous young people.  Dicky and I had conspired, for the sustained effect on Mrs. Portheris, to sit in the banquette, while Isabel was to suffer Mr. Mafferton in the coupe—­an arrangement which her mother viewed with entire complacency.  “After all,” said Mrs. Portheris to momma, “we’re not in Hyde Park—­and young people will be young people.”  We had not counted, however, with the Senator, who suddenly realised, as Dicky was handing me up, that it was his business, in the capacity of Doge, to interfere.  It is to his credit that he found it embarrassing, on account of his natural, almost paternal, dislike to make things unpleasant for Dicky.  He assumed a sternly impenetrable expression, thought about it for a moment, and then approached Mr. Mafferton.

“I’d be obliged to you,” he said, “if you could arrange, without putting yourself out any, to change places with young Dod, there, as far as St. Moritz.  I have my reasons—­but not necessarily for publication.  See?”

Mr. Mafferton’s eye glistened with appreciation of the confidence reposed in him.  “I shall be most happy,” he said, “if Dod doesn’t mind.”  But Dicky, with indecent haste, was already in the coupe.  “Don’t mention it, Mafferton,” he said out of the window.  “I’m delighted—­at least—­whatever the Senator says has got to be done, of course,” and he made an attempt to look hurt that would not have imposed upon anybody but a self-constituted Doge with a guilty conscience.  I took my bereavement in stony calm, with possibly just a suggestion about my eyebrows and under-lip that some day, on the far free shores of Lake Michigan, a downtrodden daughter would re-assert herself; poppa re-entered an interieur darkened by a thunder-cloud on the brow of his Aunt Caroline; and we started.