he cried, with a broad grin.

"Oh, you ninny!"

"Well, we must elope with fear and trembling or it won't count," he
cried. "Is there anything you have to buy before we sail? If there is,
we must attend to it now, because we leave at a most outlandish hour in
the morning."

Miss Vernon looked alarmed for a moment, the real enormity of the
escapade striking her with full force. But she smiled in the next and
said that she could make a few necessary purchases in a few minutes if
he would direct the cabman. "It's a long way to Manila, you know," she
said. "Hugh, I noticed in the paper the other day that this is the
season for typhoons, or whatever you call them, in the Indian Ocean. I
looked them up in the dictionary. There's a picture of one in action,
and they must be dreadful things. One of them could tear our ship to
pieces in a minute, I should judge. Wouldn't it be awful--if--if--"

"Pshaw! Typhoons are nothing! It's a simoon that you're thinking about,
and they happen only on the desert. In what dictionary did you
see that?"

"Webster's, of course."

Mr. Ridgeway did not continue along that line, but mentally resolved to
look into Webster's on the sly, and, furthermore, to ask the captain of
the _Saint Cloud_ to tell him all he knew about typhoons.

"Have him drive to Arnold's, Hugh."