“Judy! Judy! I can’t believe that we are really here, that this is Paris, and that you are you! As for me, I feel like ’there was an old woman as I’ve heard tell’ who said ’Lawk a mercy on me, this surely can’t be I.’”

Molly settled herself with a sigh of supreme enjoyment on the lumpy seat of an extremely rickety taxi that Judy had engaged to take the Browns from the station to Mrs. Pace’s very exclusive pension on the Boulevard St. Michel.

“It does seem almost too good to be true that I have got you and your dear mother at last. I have not been able to work for a week because of the excitement of expectation. I went over to Monroe’s this morning and got your mail. I could hardly lug it home, both of you had such a batch. You see, the mail has beaten your slow steamer in and everyone is writing to have a greeting ready for you in Paris.” And Judy, who was in the middle, put embracing arms around both Mrs. Brown and Molly as they rode down the Avenue de l’Opera.

How wonderful Paris looked to them on that clear, crisp day in autumn! She was showing her best and most smiling aspect to the travelers, which delighted Judy, as she felt quite responsible for her beloved city and wanted her friends to like it as much as she did. They passed various points of interest which Judy pointed out with pride, and which brought answering thrills from Mrs. Brown and Molly.

The streets were gay with little pushcarts, laden with chrysanthemums and attended by the most delightful looking old women. Everyone seemed to be in a good humor and no one in much of a hurry except the chauffeurs, and they went whizzing by at a most incredible speed through the crowded thoroughfares.

“How clean the streets are!” exclaimed Mrs. Brown. “And what a good smell!”

“Oh, I just wondered if you would notice the smell! That is Paris. ‘Every city has an odor of its own,’ Papa says, and I believe he is right. Paris smells better than New York, although I like the smell in New York, too; but Paris has a strange freshness in its odor that reminds me of flowers and good things to eat, and suggests gay times, rollicking fun and adventure.”

“Same old Judy,” laughed Molly, “with her imagination on tap.”

Just then they ran under the arches of the Louvre into the Place du Carrousel, and Molly held her breath with wonder and delight. Then came the Seine with its beautiful bridges, its innumerable boats, and its quays with the historic secondhand book stalls where Edwin Green had looked forward to walking with her, searching for treasures of first editions and what not. “Never mind,” thought Molly, “Professor Green may come later and the first editions will keep.”

“There is the wonderful statue of Voltaire, and through this street you can catch a glimpse of the Beaux Arts,” chanted Judy. “Now look out, for before you know it we will be in the aristocratic Faubourg St. Germain, and then the Luxembourg Gardens, and here we are at our own respectable door before we are ready for it! Now Mrs. Pace will eat both of you up for a while and I cannot get a word in edgewise.”

The Pension Pace was on the corner where a small street ran into the broad boulevard at a sharp angle, making the building wedge-shaped. It was a very imposing looking house and Mrs. Brown wondered at a woman being able to conduct such a huge affair. She expressed her surprise to Judy, who informed her that Mrs. Pace had only the three upper floors and that the other flats were let to different tenants.

“The elevator takes us to the fifth floor, where Mrs. Pace has her parlors, dining salon and swellest boarders, at least the boarders able to pay the most. Of course we do not think that they are the swellest, since we are on the seventh floor ourselves. Who so truly swell as we?” Judy got out of the taxi with such an assumption of great style that the chauffeur, much impressed, demanded a larger pourboire than she saw fit to give him.

“They always try to make you pay more, no matter what you offer. I am adamant, however, where cabbies and chauffeurs are concerned. Papa says, ’Look after the tips and the legitimate expenses will look after themselves.’ So I look after the tips and trust to luck for the rest to come out right. I am not much of an economist, I fear, but I am learning, now that I am on a strict allowance.”

An elevator, so slow that its progress was almost imperceptible, took them to the fifth floor where Mrs. Pace was in readiness to receive them. Her greeting was very cordial and condescending. She seemed to be taking them under her protecting wing, giving them to understand that with her they had nothing more to fear or worry about; and as Molly and her mother had nothing in particular to worry about and certainly nothing to fear, they were very much amused by her attitude toward them. Judy was purple with suppressed merriment as Mrs. Pace advised them to go right to bed, to rest up from their long journey, poor sick, miserable, friendless females.

Mrs. Brown assured her that she was not at all tired and never felt better in her life; that she had made many friends on the steamer; and that she would freshen up a bit with some soap and water and then go out for a walk with Miss Julia Kean. Mrs. Brown had reckoned without her host, however, as the intrepid Mrs. Pace took them to their room on the seventh floor, just across the hall from Judy’s, and did not leave them until they were in their kimonos and actually lying down.

“You must not try to keep up, dear ladies, when you are overfatigued and ill. Bed is the best place for you, bed and quiet. Miss Kean had better leave you now and let you have a little nap.”

While Mrs. Pace talked, she had plumped up their pillows and lowered the shade of the one large window, opened their suitcases and got out their kimonos and, despite their feeble protest, had actually undressed them and put them to bed! Then, forcibly ejecting Judy, she shut the door with admonitions for them to sleep until dinner at six-thirty.

Judy went very dutifully to her room until she heard the last of Mrs. Pace’s ponderous tread on the stairs; then she crept softly to the Browns’ door and gently opened it to find Mrs. Brown and Molly rolling on the bed, overcome with laughter.

“Oh, oh, oh! She has taken at least forty-five years off of my age,” giggled Mrs. Brown like a veritable boarding-school miss. “I have never in my life seen such a born boss as the redoubtable Mrs. Pace! Did you see her undo my belt and take off my skirt? I could not have felt more like a child if my waist had been a pinafore instead of a respectable black silk. And as for Molly, she was treated as though she were just about old enough to go into rompers.” And they all went off into peals of laughter.

“Well, now is the time to take a stand or you will never be able to,” said Judy. “I defied her from the first and she lets me alone wonderfully.”

“Yes, I noticed how you withstood her authority when you were sent to your room!” grinned Molly, as she got back into the clothes that had been forcibly removed only five minutes before. “I see you have sneaked in our letters and I, for one, am going to read mine, and then if we can get down stairs without the dragon devouring us, let’s take a walk. We shall have plenty of time before dinner.”

They accordingly read their letters and crept down stairs and out on the street for a breath of air and a stroll in the Luxembourg Gardens. It was too late to try to see the pictures in the Gallery of the Luxembourg and, after all, they had the winter before them. And now that she was out on the street, having escaped the dragon, Mrs. Brown confessed to feeling a little mite tired, so they sat down on a bench in the Gardens and watched the children play.

“Poor Mrs. Brown, of course you are tired! That is the most irritating thing about Mrs. Pace: she is always right. ’It is best to rest after a trip whether you feel tired or not, as the reaction after a journey is obliged to come, and you pay up for it to-morrow if you do not rest to-day’,” and Judy imitated Mrs. Pace to the life.

“Well, you may be sure, my dear girls, that wild horses will not drag the fact from me in the presence of the dragon, even if I am weary unto death. Does she coerce all her boarders as she did me, Judy?”

“Most of them are completely under her dominion, finding it easiest and best to take the course of least resistance. Some few rebel, but they usually end by moving on. If you stay at the Pension Pace and wish to “requiescat in pace,” you do as she says to do. I have defied her from the first and now I am rated as an undesirable boarder. Had it not been that she was wild to have you with her because of your relationship to the Marquise d’Ochte, she would have raised some cock and bull story about my room having been engaged by someone a year ago and, since her honor was at stake, she would have to ask me to vacate.

“I tell you she is a sly one. You must either have lots and loads of money, or you must do as she says, do or die. Of course she has an excellent house in a most desirable quarter and she caters to Americans. You will notice that the food is much more American than French; and after people have been knocking around the Continent, of course they are overjoyed to have some food that seems like home.”

“But I don’t want American food,” wailed Molly. “I want French things, even snails; and I want to learn how to ask for these things in the most Frenchy style. What is the use in coming to Paris and staying with a stuffy old dame from Philadelphia and eating the things we have at home?”

“Oh, I am so glad you feel that way! How about you, Mrs. Brown? Papa and Mamma made me promise to do just as you thought best. They put me in Mrs. Pace’s house and I have been determined not to worry them about changing, but I am ’most dead of her and her ways. Do say you think we ought to go to housekeeping or should get in a French family; anything to get out of the dragon’s den,” pleaded Judy.

“For how long did you engage our room?” asked Mrs. Brown, smiling at Judy’s despair.

“One week; and mine, also, is taken by the week. She tried to make Papa sign for the whole winter, but he was on to her from the first and refused to do more than take it from week to week. He and Mamma stayed here a few days on their way to Turkey, and you would have died laughing if you had seen Mrs. Pace try to make Papa ‘Fletcherize.’ You know he always eats as though the train would not wait. At every meal she remarked on it and one day said at dinner: ’This is veal, Mr. Kean, and should be thoroughly masticated.’ Whereupon he put down his knife and fork and, looking her solemnly in the eye, said: ’That is good advice no doubt for ordinary mortals, but after long years in railroad camps I have acquired a gizzard.’ With that he took a great piece of blanquette de veau and to all appearances swallowed it whole without changing his expression. I choked so I had to leave the table and I believe Mrs. Pace, to this day, thinks that by a skillful legerdemain I swallowed the veal! Anyhow, Bobby ate to suit himself after that.”

“Oh, Judy, how ridiculous you are! I wish I could have seen Mr. Kean execute his daring feat,” laughed Molly. “Mother, let’s look around for an apartment and go to housekeeping immediately. I am sorry we told Elise O’Brien about Mrs. Pace’s. I can’t bear for her to be anywhere that is not pleasant. She has had tribulations enough in her day.”

Judy had not yet heard anything of their fellow passengers, as they had been so occupied with Paris and the pension that they had had no time to tell her of their voyage and the pleasant people they had met. She was much interested in the fact that Miss O’Brien was to be at the art school for the winter and said she was a girl of undoubted talent. As for young Kinsella, he was the cleverest draughtsman at the League.

“Do you girls think you like Elise enough to have her come to live with us for the winter?” asked Mrs. Brown. “I feel sure the poor girl would be happy, and if you would all fit in together and be congenial, I really think it would be an act of charity to ask her. We must consider it from all sides before we rush into it, however.”

“Mother, it would be splendid!” declared Molly. “I believe Mrs. Huntington was dying for you to ask Elise, but of course had to wait for you to suggest it. We could divide the expenses into four parts and I know it would be cheaper than boarding and infinitely more agreeable.”

“Mrs. Brown, I am sure we should get on like a house afire, and it does seem as though we might take Elise in and give her a pleasant home. I promise to be real good and get on with everybody, if I can only know I am to leave the Maison Pace in peace,” promised Judy.

So it was decided by these three impulsive souls to take in Elise O’Brien and to get a flat forthwith and leave the sheltering wing of the dragon. Mrs. Brown thought it best to stay a fortnight in their present quarters so they could look well about them; she also wanted to see her old friend and cousin, the Marquise d’Ochte, for if she were anything like the Sally Bolling of old, she felt sure she could depend on her for some assistance in the matter of getting settled.

“Of course, she may have changed so, after being married to a French nobleman for some twenty-eight years, that I will hesitate to ask anything of her; but I have an idea old Sally could not change. I remember her as being a great harum-scarum but with the best heart in the world, and absolutely honest and unaffected. My experience is that honest, unaffected people do not change in the long run.”

“What did she look like, Mother?” asked Molly.

“Well, when I come to think of it, she looked a little like you. She is only my second cousin, once removed, not such very close kin; but this red hair of yours comes cropping out in every generation or so in my family and the similar coloring makes one fancy a likeness even if there is none; but Sally had your eyes and your chin. She took life much more lightly than my Molly does, saw a jest where none was intended and sometimes cracked a joke when seriousness would have been in better taste. I have not seen her for many years and she stopped corresponding with all of us; not that there was any disagreement, but letter-writing simply died a natural death, as time went on. I am greatly interested in seeing her.”

Mrs. Brown also decided to let Mr. Kinsella approach the O’Briens in regard to having Elise live with her. She was very well aware of Mrs. Huntington’s nature and felt that that lady would be fully capable of treating her as though Elise were necessary to the housekeeping scheme to help out the financial end; and Mrs. Brown was determined to have no one with her as a boarder, but to run the ménage on a co-operative principle, letting all of them share the expense.

Mrs. Huntington and Elise had stopped in Brussels for a visit with some friends and Mr. Kinsella and Pierce were still in Antwerp getting their fill of the pictures to be seen there. They were uncertain how long it would take them to grow tired of the interesting Belgian city and could not tell just when their friends might expect them in Paris.

When the three renegades returned from their walk in the Luxembourg Gardens, they hoped to reach their rooms without being seen by Mrs. Pace, but that lady’s motto was “Eternal Vigilance,” and no one went out of her house or came in unobserved. She met them as they stepped off the elevator on the fifth floor and gently but firmly admonished them for their disobedience. Molly noticed her mother’s heightening color and her quivering nostrils and remembered with a smile what Aunt Mary, their old cook, always said to them when they were children: “Olé Miss is long suffrin’ an’ slow to anger but when her nose gits to wuckin’, you chillun ought to learn that she done had ’nuf and you had better make yo’sefs scurse.” Peace-loving Molly drew Mrs. Brown’s arm through her own and gently pressing it, led her upstairs.

“Thank you, my dear, I was on the verge of attacking the dragon, and since we are to be here two weeks, I must not do anything to make it more difficult. But did you ever see anyone more impertinent?” asked Mrs. Brown, still sniffing the battle from afar.

“Never,” sympathized Judy. “I wish you had said your say. I believe you could get ahead of the fabulous monster in open combat. She is, after all, a very flabby, fabulous monster and one prick would do for her.”