sun. He had been glad to sit in such cool quarters most of the morning, for he was feeling somewhat slack and washed-out after his adventures of the previous day, and the anxieties through which he had passed had affected his nerves. He was also in a state of pleasant reflection about the fairy godmother upon whom he had so curiously and unexpectedly alighted, and had paid much more attention to her than to his account-books and letters. She had said that this is a small world, and that they would meet again; he was cudgelling his brains to think how, when, and where such a delightful event could happen. Certainly he very much wanted to see her again.
Then he became melancholy, and asked himself what good it could do if he did meet her. She was a very nice young lady, who could afford to carry a roll of bank-notes in her purse and to stay at Claridge's Hotel; while he was a poor clerk, who earned just one hundred and twenty pounds a year and lived in a cheap boarding-house in Bloomsbury. Oh, if he were only a rich man, with a town house and a country house, and horses and carriages and a car or two and a yacht and——— The door of the room was suddenly thrust open, and a head just as suddenly presented itself round it in a fashion which suggested that somebody had cut the body completely away from it and was now presenting the head itself as a trophy of prowess with beheading axe or sword. It was a somewhat noticeable head presented in this fashion, being covered with a thick crop of very red hair, rather thatchlike in tex-
