Page:The principal girl (IA principalgirl00snai).pdf/104

 A kid not a day more than nine, all on his own. I think we ought to have got his name and address."

Mary thought he would have forgotten his name, and that he wouldn't have been at the trouble to possess himself of anything so superfluous as an address, but she agreed with a further display of true feminine irrelevance—and what would any Principal Girl be without it?—that they certainly ought to have got them.

And so they turned back for the purpose. But the bird had flown. They walked as far as Trafalgar Square, crossed over, and came back on the other side, but their quarry had quitted the Strand.

"We must look out for him again," said the heir to the barony. "Although I expect there are thousands like him."

"Millions," said Mary.

"And, of course, it don't matter what you do in individual cases, so the Johnnies say who know all about it—but you must let me stand that sovereign, although it is sweet of you and all that."

The heir to the barony produced the sum of one pound sterling, and inserted it in Mary's muff, a very ordinary sort of rabbit-skin affair.

Mary declined point-blank to accept the sovereign, which irresponsible behavior on her part made her escort look rather troubled and unhappy.

"Oh, but you must."