character and personality of the other Martin Gray. Books, warm and friendly, lined the walls. Mounted on wood, fish of different sizes and breeds hung above the cases, and over the fireplace there was a full-length oil painting of a man in a red coat and riding breeches. His kind eyes greeted Joan.

For several minutes she stood beneath it, smiling back. Then she turned and put her hand involuntarily on the boy's shoulder. "Oh, Marty!" she said. "I AM sorry."

The boy gave one quick upward glance, and cleared his throat. "I told you that this house is mine. It isn't. It's yours. It's the only way, if you're to remain in the city. Is it good enough? Do you want to stay as much as all that?"

The puzzled look came back. For a moment Joan was silent, worrying out the meaning of Martin's abrupt and rather cryptic words. There seemed to be a tremendous amount of fuss because she happened to be a girl.

Martin spoke again before she had emerged from the thicket of inward questions. She was only eighteen, after all.

"I mean, you can marry me if you like." he said, "and then no one can take you back." He was amazed at his courage and hideously afraid that she would laugh at him. He had never dared to say how much he loved her.

She did laugh, but with a ring of so much pleasure and relief that the blood flew to his head. "Why, Marty, what a brain! What organization! Of course I'll marry you. Why ever didn't we think of that last night?"

But before he could pull himself together a man-servant entered with an air of extreme surprise. "I didn't know you'd come home, sir," he said, "until I saw the suit-case." He saw Joan, and his eyes rounded.

"I was just going to ring," said Martin. "We want some breakfast. Will you see to it, please?" Alone again, Martin held out his hand to Joan, in an odd, boyish way. And she took it, boyishly too. "Thank you, Marty, dear," she said. "You've found the magic carpet. My troubles are over; and oh, what a pretty little bomb I shall have for Grandmamma! And now let's explore my house. If it's all like this, I shall simply love it!" And away she darted into the hall.

"And now," said Joan, "being duly married,—and you certainly do make things move when you start, Marty,—to send a telegram to Grandmother! Lead me to the nearest place."

Certain that every person in that crowded street saw in them a newly married couple, Martin tried to hide his joy under a mask of extreme callousness and universal indifference. With the challenging antagonism of an English husband,—whose national habit it is invariably to stalk ahead of his women-kind while they scramble along at his heels,—he led the way well in advance of his unblushing bride. But his eyes were black with emotion. He saw rainbows all over the sky, and rings of bright light round the square heads of all the buildings which competed in an endeavor to touch the clouds; and there was a song in his heart.

They sat down side by side in a Western Union office, dallied for a moment or two with the tied pencils the points of which are always blunt, and to the incessant longs and shorts of a dozen telegraph instruments they put their epoch-making news on the neat blanks. Martin did not intend to be left out of it. His best pal was off the map, and so he chose a second-best friend and wrote triumphantly: "Have been married to-day. Staying in New York for honeymoon. How are you?" He was sorry that he couldn't remember the addresses of a hundred other men. He felt in the mood to pelt the earth with such telegrams as that.

"Listen," said Joan, her eyes dancing with mischief. "I think this is a pretty good effort: 'Blessings and congratulations on her marriage to-day may be sent to Mrs. Martin Gray, at 26 East Sixty-seventh Street, New York.—Joan.' How's that?"

It was the first time the boy had seen that name, and he blinked and smiled and got very red. "Terse and literary," he said, dying to put his arms round her and kiss her before all mankind. "They'll have something to talk about at dinner to-night. A nice whack in the eye for Gleave."

He managed to achieve a supremely blase air while the words were being counted, but it crumbled instantly when the telegraphist shot a quick look at Joan and gave Martin a grin of cordial congratulation.

As soon as he saw a taxi, Martin hailed it and told the chauffeur to drive to the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. "We'll walk from there," he said to Joan, "—if you'd like to, that is."

"I would like to. I want to peer into the shop windows and look at hats and dresses. I've got absolutely nothing to wear. Marty, tell me, are we well off?"

Martin laughed. She reminded him of a youngster going for a picnic and pooling pocket money. "Yes," he said, "—quite."

She sat back with her hands crossed in her lap. "I'm so glad. It simplifies everything to have plenty to spend." But for her exquisite slightness and freshness, no one would have imagined that she was an only just-fledged bird, flying for the first time. Her equability and poise were those of a completely sophisticated woman. Nothing seemed to surprise her. Whatever happened was all part and parcel of the great adventure. Yesterday she was an overwatched girl, looking yearningly at a city that appeared to be unattainable. To-day she was a married woman who, a moment ago, had been standing before a minister, binding herself for good or ill to a man who was delightfully a boy and of whom she knew next to nothing. What did it matter—what did anything matter—so long as she achieved her long-dreamed-of ambition to live and see life?