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316 "It's O'Toole—Michael O'Toole," she admitted. But the admission seemed to cost her an effort. It was plainly not an easy name to say.

I could place no Michael O'Toole, I felt sure, among the starry names that dotted the Social Register which Bud and I had once so carefully studied. But I kept my nose to the ground, like a beagle after a cotton-tail.

"That's a grand old Irish name—O'Toole," I admitted.

"Yes," agreed the girl. "One of his ancestors was a king in Ireland, he told me."

"There must have been an awful bunch of kings in that country at one time, if all I hear is true," I remarked.

"Michael is as much a king as any of them," she proudly protested.

"They—they don't ever call him Mike, do they?" I had the impertinence to inquire. For I was beginning to realize that this pathetic little cabinet-piece, whom I'd thought of as a Dresden china rarity, housed up from all the ways of the world, was not without a mind of her own.

"Yes, I think they do! But what about it?" was the reply from my suddenly sullen-eyed antagonist.