I shall have to dispose of you safely somehow." With that he rose, lighted a cigar, and presently sallied forth into the world.

The matter of learning the quickest way to Buda-Pesth and procuring a ticket for the morrow took him little more than half an hour.
Then the matter of disposing safely of Pollyooly and the Lump during his absence rose again to his mind and he walked along pondering it.
Presently there came to him a happy thought: there was their common friend, Hilary Vance, an artist who had employed Pollyooly as his model for a set of stories for _The Blue Magazine_.

Hilary Vance was devoted to Pollyooly, and he had a spare bedroom.

But for a while the Honourable John Ruffin hesitated; the artist was a man of an uncommonly mercurial, irresponsible temperament.

Was it safe to entrust two small children to his care?
Then he reflected that Pollyooly was a strong corrective of irresponsibility, and took a taxicab to Chelsea.
Hilary Vance, very broad, very thick, very round, with a fine, rebellious mop of tow-coloured hair, which had fallen forward so as nearly to hide his big, simple eyes, opened the door to him.