"All right," interrupted Brown, and turned toward the vision of loveliness and distress which was now standing on the top of her own back fence holding fast to a wistaria trellis and flattering Clarence with low and honeyed appeals.

The cat, however, was either too stupid or too confused to respond; he gazed blankly at his mistress, and when Brown began furtively edging his way toward him Clarence arose, stood a second in alert indecision, then began to back away.

"We've got him between us!" called out Brown. "If you'll stand ready to seize him when I drive him----"

There was a wild scurry, a rush, a leap, frantic clawing for foothold.

"Now, Miss Betty! Quick!" cried Brown. "Don't let him pa.s.s you."

She spread her skirts, but the shameless Clarence rushed headlong between the most delicately ornamental pair of ankles in Manhattan.

"Oh-h!" cried the girl in soft despair, and made a futile clutch; but she could not arrest the flight of Clarence, she merely upset him, turning him for an instant into a furry pinwheel, whirling through mid-air, landing in her yard, rebounding like a rubber ball, and disappearing, with one flying leap, into a narrow opening in the bas.e.m.e.nt masonry.

"Where is he?" asked Brown, precariously balanced on the next fence.

"Do you know," she said, "this is becoming positively ghastly. He's bolted into our cellar."

"Why, that's all right, isn't it?" asked Brown. "All you have to do is to go inside, descend to the cellar, and light the gas."

"There's no gas."

"You have electric light?"

"Yes, but it's turned off at the main office. The house is closed for the summer, you know."

Brown, balancing cautiously, walked the intervening fence like an amateur on a tightrope.

Her pretty hat was a trifle on one side; her cheeks brilliant with excitement and anxiety. Utterly oblivious of herself and of appearances in her increasing solicitude for the adored Clarence, she sat the fence, cross saddle, balancing with one hand and pointing with the other to the barred ventilator into which Clarence had darted.

A wisp of sunny hair blew across her crimson cheek; slender, active, excitedly unconscious of self, she seemed like some eager, adorable little gamin perched there, intent on mischief.

"If you'll drop into our yard," she said, "and place that soap box against the ventilator, Clarence can't get out that way!"

It was done before she finished the request. She disengaged herself from the fencetop, swung over, hung an instant, and dropped into a soft flower bed.

Breathing fast, disheveled, they confronted one another on the gra.s.s. His blue suit of serge was smeared with whitewash; her gown was a sight. She felt for her hat instinctively, repinned it at hazard, looked at her gloves, and began to realize what she had done.

"I--I couldn't help it," she faltered; "I couldn't leave Clarence in a city of five m-million strangers--all alone--terrified out of his senses-- could I? I had rather--rather be thought--anything than be c-cruel to a helpless animal."

Brown dared not trust himself to answer. She was too beautiful and his emotion was too deep. So he bent over and attempted to dust his garments with the flat of his hand.

"I am so sorry," she said in a low voice. "Are your clothes quite ruined?"

"Oh, I don't mind," he protested happily, "I really don't mind a bit. If you'll only let me help you corner that infern--that unfortunate cat I shall be perfectly happy."

She said, with heightened color: "It is exceedingly nice of you to say so.... I--I don't quite know--what do you think we had better do?"

"Suppose," he said, "you go into the bas.e.m.e.nt, unlock the cellar door and call. He can't bolt this way."

She nodded and entered the house. A few moments later he heard her calling, so persuasively that it was all he could do not to run to her, and why on earth that cat didn't he never could understand.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XI

BETTY

_In Which the Remorseless and Inexorable Results of Psychical Research Are Revealed to the Very Young_

At intervals for the next ten minutes her fresh, sweet, fascinating voice came to him where he stood in the yard; then he heard it growing fainter, more distant, receding; then silence.

Listening, he suddenly heard a far, rushing sound from subterranean depths--like a load of coal being put in--then a frightened cry.

He sprang into the bas.e.m.e.nt, ran through laundry and kitchen. The cellar door swung wide open above the stairs which ran down into darkness; and as he halted to listen Clarence dashed up out of the depths, scuttled around the stairs and fled upward into the silent regions above.

"Betty!" he cried, forgetting in his alarm the lesser conventions, "where are you?"

"Oh, dear--oh, dear!" she wailed. "I am in such a dreadful plight. Could you help me, please?"

"Are you hurt?" he asked. Fright made his voice almost inaudible. He struck a match with shaking fingers and ran down the cellar stairs.

"Betty! Where are you?"

"Oh, I am here--in the coal."

"What?"

"I--I can't seem to get out; I stepped into the coal pit in the dark and it all--all slid with me and over me and I'm in it up to the shoulders."

Another match flamed; he saw a stump of a candle, seized it, lighted it, and, holding it aloft, gazed down upon the most heart rending spectacle he had ever witnessed.

The next instant he grasped a shovel and leaped to the rescue. She was quite calm about it; the situation was too awful, the future too hopeless for mere tears. What had happened contained all the dignified elements of a catastrophe. They both realized it, and when, madly shoveling, he at last succeeded in releasing her she leaned her full weight on his own, breathing rapidly, and suffered him to support and guide her through the flame-shot darkness to the culinary regions above.

Here she sank down on a chair for one moment in utter collapse. Then she looked up, resolutely steadying her voice:

"Could anything on earth more awful have happened to a girl?" she asked, lips quivering in spite of her. She stretched out what had once been a pair of white gloves, she looked down at what had been a delicate summer gown of white. "How," she asked with terrible calmness, "am I to get to Oyster Bay?"

He dropped on to a kitchen chair opposite her, clasping his coal-stained hands between his knees, utterly incapable of speech.

She looked at her shoes--once snowy white; with a shudder she stripped the soiled gloves from elbow to wrist and flung them aside. Her arms and hands formed a starling contrast to the remainder of the ensemble.

"What," she asked, "am I to do?"

"The thing to do," he said, "is to telephone to your family at Oyster Bay."