I was getting quite anxious.”

“Why, I’ve been looking for you everywhere inside,” stammered Mr. Fatigay. “That’s where everyone was being met. I thought you must have met with an accident or something.”

“Ah!” said she with a smile. “Just the same old Alfred! Didn’t you guess how I’d feel about the public scene? Never mind, you’re forgiven. Hop inside!

“But who . . . ?” she added with a stare. “But what on earth is this?”

Emily, unable to breathe even, looked up supplicatingly at her protector.

“Well,” said he, “ha! ha! Well, the fact is . . . I wondered, er . . . I thought perhaps you might like a chimp.”

During the pregnant silence that followed, the taxi clock rose thrice.

“Good heavens!” said Amy at last. “Is that the wonderful present you’ve been hinting at in all your letters? A monkey! Darling! My poor old boy! What in the world could you have been thinking of? What should I want with a monkey? Covered with fleas, no doubt, and sure to make a filthy mess about the house! You’d better shoot it, or give it to the zoo or something. I don’t want it.”

“Her name’s Emily,” said Mr. Fatigay, very cast down.

“Anyway,” he said, seeing that this communication elicited no response, “we’d better be getting along to your hotel. Get in, Emily.”

“I don’t want the filthy creature in along with me,” cried Amy. “Let it sit beside the driver, or ride on the roof. Oh! I don’t know though. Anything is better than being made a public spectacle. Perhaps we’d better have it inside.”

Emily had heard little of all this. She stood amazed. To be given away! She felt like something out of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. And to be given by him, for whom she had renounced all, for whom she had come so far, asking nothing but to watch over him — to be given by him to her! She had expected a disillusion to result upon the first sight of Amy, but it seemed to be happening in the wrong quarter.

“Get in, Emily.” The words percolated at last, and she automatically obeyed. Taxis were new to her, and, seeing only the back seat within, for the others were sprung back against the partition, she naturally took her place on this, not as one wishing to presume, but because she saw no alternative.

This aspect of the matter did not perhaps occur to Amy, for, seeing the chimp occupying one of the better seats, she took offense, and demanded that it be turned off at once, and be made to sit upon the floor.

“Emily shall sit upon a front seat,” said Mr. Fatigay, and he smiled at her reassuringly as he pressed one down.

“You see, my dear,” he resumed, as the taxi jolted forward, “Emily is no ordinary chimp. She understands almost everything that is said to her, and, as for having fleas and being ill-trained for the house, why she is as clean and neat and well-behaved as any human being.