and slipped it into her pocketbook. "I'm going to keep it always," she
said. "How about Mrs. Houghton?"

"She'll love you! She's a peach. And little Skeezics--"

"Who is Skeezics?"

"Edith. Their kid. Eleven years old. She paid me the compliment of
announcing, when she was seven, that she was going to marry me when she
grew up! But I believe, now, she has a crush on Sir Walter Raleigh.
She'll adore you, too."

"I'm afraid of them all," she confessed; "they won't like--an
elopement."

"They'll fall over themselves with joy to think I'm settled for life!
I'm afraid I've been a cussed nuisance to Uncle Henry," he said,
ruefully; "always doing fool things, you know,--I mean when I was a boy.
And he's been great, always. But I know he's been afraid I'd take a wild
flight in actresses."

"'_Wild_' flight? What will he call--" She caught her breath.

"He'll call it a 'wild flight in angels'!" he said.

The word made her put a laughing and protesting hand (which he kissed)
over his lips. Then she said that she remembered Mr. Houghton: "I met
him a long time ago; when--when you were a little boy."

"And yet here you are, 'Mrs. Maurice Curtis!' Isn't it supreme?"