“How can a fellow?  She blushes just as much when he speaks to her as when I do.”

“But are you quite sure,” I asked delicately, “whether Mr. Mafferton is—­interested?”

“There’s the worst kind of danger of it,” Dicky replied impressively.  “I don’t know whether I ought to tell you, but the fact is Mafferton’s just got the sack—­I beg your pardon—­just been congeed himself.  They say she was an American and it was a bad case; she behaved most unfeelingly.”

“You shouldn’t believe all you hear,” I said, “but I don’t see what that has to do with it.”

“Why, he’s just in the mood to console himself.  What fellow would think twice of being thrown over, if Miss Portheris were the alternative!”

“It depends, Dicky,” I observed.  “You are jumping at conclusions.”

“What I hoped,” he went on regretfully as we took our places in the elevator, “was that we might travel together a bit and that you wouldn’t mind just now and then taking old Mafferton off our hands, you know.”

“Dicky,” I said, as we swiftly descended, “here is our itinerary.  Genoa, you see, then Pisa, Rome, Naples, Rome again, Florence, Venice, Verona, up through the lakes to Switzerland, and so on.  We leave to-morrow.  If we should meet again, I don’t promise to undertake it personally, but I’ll see what momma can do.”

[Illustration:  Breakfast with Dicky Dod.]

CHAPTER VIII.

Poppa said as we steamed out of Paris that night that the Presidency itself would not induce him to reside there, and I think he meant it.  I don’t know whether the omnibus numeros and the correspondances where you change, or the men sitting staring on the side walks drinking things for hours at a time, or getting no vegetables to speak of with his joint, annoyed him most, but he was very decided in his views.  Momma and I were not quite so certain; we had a guilty sense of ingratitude when we thought of the creations in the van; but the cobblestones biassed momma a good deal, who hoped she should get some sleep in Italy.  I had breakfasted that morning in the most amusing way with Dicky Dod at a cafe in the Champs Elysees—­poppa and momma had an engagement with Mr. and Mrs. Malt and couldn’t come—­and in the leniency of the recollection I said something favourable about the Arc de Triomphe at sunset; but I gathered from the Senator’s remarks that, while the sunset was fine enough, he didn’t see the propriety in using it that way as a background for Napoleon Bonaparte, so to speak.

“Result is,” said the Senator, “the intelligent foreigner’s got pretty nearly to go out of the town to see a sunset without having to think about Aboukir and Alexandria.  But that’s Paris all over.  There isn’t a street, or a public building, or a statue, or a fountain, or a thing that doesn’t shout at you, ’Look at me!  Think about me!  Your admiration or