"Prob'ly I was on the way home," he suggested. "I stopped to talk to some kids. I'll call her up anyway."
Sube went to the telephone, and removing the receiver with one hand he carefully pressed down the hook with the other to avoid arousing the operator, and called loudly for Guilfords' number. Then he held an illuminating though strictly imaginary conversation with Nancy, in the course of which he twitted her playfully about being so easily fooled.
"Put an'thing more on the tree?" he asked finally. "That's right! I guess we put on everything there was. Well, g'by! See you to-morrow!" And he hung up the receiver.
He had just resumed his chair after this master-stroke when the telephone rang. This time it was the real Nancy.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE PARTY
Sube's glib flow of language of the moment before seemed to have deserted him entirely. He stuttered and stammered and stalled. He tried to put matters off till the morrow, but Nancy would not hear of such a thing. She wanted to be reassured as to Auntie Emma's condition. She must know at once whether her party was likely to be cheated out of his presence.
"Mamma called up your mother," she informed him, "and she said she hadn't heard a word about it. She thought there must be some mistake."
"Yes, there was," Sube considered it safe to reply.