and determined at least to try it.

"Miss Dodge," I pleaded, bowing as if I had known them all my
life, "I've been trying to find your father all the evening. It's
very important."

She looked up at me surprised and in doubt whether to laugh or
stamp her pretty little foot in indignation at my stupendous
nerve.

She laughed. "You are a very brave young man," she replied with a
roguish look at Bennett's discomfiture over the interruption of
the tete-a-tete.

There was a note of seriousness in it, too, that made me ask
quickly, "Why?"

The smile flitted from her face and in its place came a frank
earnest expression which I later learned to like and respect very
much. "My father has declared he will eat the very next reporter
who tries to interview him here," she answered.

I was about to prolong the waiting time by some jolly about such a
stunning girl not having by any possibility such a cannibal of a
parent, when the rattle of the changing gears of a car outside
told of the approach of a limousine.

The big front door opened and Elaine flung herself in the arms of
an elderly, stern-faced, gray-haired man. "Why, Dad," she cried,
"where have you been? I missed you so much at dinner. I'll be so