"He is sure to be there," said the deep-eyed man; and he and the other men laughed. "If you sit on a bench where the grass and flowers are, outside the Casino door, and watch, perhaps you will see him come down the steps. But you are small to be out all alone looking for him."
"It's very important for me to find my father before it is dark," said Rosemary. "So I thank you for telling me, and now goodbye."
Daintily polite as usual, she bowed to them all, and started up the hill.
As she walked briskly on, she studied with large, starry eyes the face of every man she met; but there was not a suitable father among them. She was still fatherless when she reached the Place of the Casino, where she had often come before, to walk in the gardens or on the terrace at unfashionable hours with her mother, on Sundays, or other days when—unfortunately—there was no work to do.
She had sat down on a bench between a French "nou-nou," with a wonderful head dress, and a hawk-visaged old lady with a golden wig, and had fixed her eyes upon the Casino door, when the throb, throb of a motor caught her attention.
Now an automobile was a marvellous dragon for Rosemary, and she could never see too many for her pleasure. Above all things, she would have loved a spin on the back of such a dragon, and she liked choosing favourites from among the dragon brood.
A splendid dark blue one was panting and quivering before the door of the Hotel de Paris, having just been started by a slim chauffeur in a short fur coat. As Rosemary gazed, deciding that this was the noblest dragon of them all, a young man ran down the steps of the hotel and got into the car. He took his place in the driver's seat, laid his hand on the steering wheel as if he were caressing a baby's head, the chauffeur sprang up beside his master, and they were off. But with a cry, Rosemary rushed across the road.
The nou-nou shrieked and hugged her muffled charge; the old lady screamed, and all the other old ladies and young ladies, and pretty girls sitting on the benches, or walking about, screamed too.
The man who drove was pale under his coat of brown tan as with a crash of machinery he brought the big blue car to a stop so close to the child that its glittering bonnet touched her coat. He did not say a word for an instant, for his lips were pressed so tightly together, that they were a white line.
