Louise was interested, too; but Betty had promised to take some papers for Mr. Littell and see that they reached an architect in one of the nearby office buildings. Bobby elected to go with her, and they decided that, that errand accomplished, they might do a little shopping and meet the others at the theater door at five o'clock.
"Mr. Waters won't be in till three o'clock," announced the freckle-faced office boy who met them in the outer office of the architect's suite.
"Then we'll have to come back," decided Betty, glancing at her watch. "It is just two now."
"You can leave anything with me," said the boy politely. "I'll see that he gets it as soon as he comes in."
"Yes, do, Betty," urged Bobby. "Dad would say it was all right to leave that envelope of papers. They're not terribly important."
"We can do our shopping and then come back," insisted Betty, to the evident disgust of Bobby and the hardly less concealed impatience of the office boy.
"Why wouldn't you leave 'em?" demanded Bobby, when they were once more in the street.
"Dad hasn't any secret service stuff, I'm sure of that. Now we have to come all the way back here again, and that means hurrying through our shopping."
"You needn't come," said Betty mildly. "Your father asked me to give those papers personally to Mr. Waters. He didn't say they were important; I don't know that they are. But if I say I am going to give an envelope personally to any one, I don't intend to give that envelope to a third person if there's nothing in it more valuable than—hair nets!"
The window they were passing suggested the comparison, and Bobby laughed good-naturedly and forebore to argue further. Promptly at three o'clock she and Betty entered the elevator in the office building and were whirled up to the fifth floor to find Mr. Waters in his private office.