“I am glad,” I remarked, “that they scorn to include me in their adoption. I wouldn’t fancy being ‘faddered’ by the Polydores.”
“You won’t be,” Ptolemy, appearing seemingly from nowhere, assured me. “We’ve named you stepdaddy.”
“If it be possible, Silvia,” I implored, “let this cup pass from me.”
“I am going down to the intelligence office today,” replied Silvia soothingly. “Diogenes is well enough to go home now, and I can run over there every evening and see that he is properly put to bed.”
I went down town feeling like a mule relieved of his pack.
When I came home that afternoon, I found Silvia sitting on the shaded porch serenely sewing. A Sabbath-like stillness pervaded. Not a Polydore in sight or sound.
“Oh!” I cried buoyantly. “The Polydores have been returned to their home station!”
“No,” she replied calmly. “They told me at the intelligence office that it would 64 be absolutely impossible to persuade, bribe, or hire a servant to assume the charge of the Polydore place.”
“I suppose,” I said glumly, “that Gladys gave the job a double cross. But will you please account for the phenomenon of the utter absence of Polydores at the present period? Has Huldah at last carried out her oft-repeated threat of exterminating the Polydore race?”