“A note for you, monsieur—pardon, mademoiselle.”
“O, stick it under the door,” she replied.
But when she had looked at the note she gurgled:
“Zingo! But this will put Tawdry in a bait! He will be furious at me! As if I should worry! He forgets I’m twenty-one and my punch is getting better every day.”
She nodded stoutly.
“Brother Tawd has clubbed my curls about my ears for the last time. And I had no heart for this scheme of his! But the other stunt—the desert, freedom, kicking along the old Sahara man enough for any emergency and my own little notion of what may come of it—those things for Verbeena!”
She looked again at the note in her hand.
“God bless Butternut,” said Verbeena Mayonnaise.
She ran to the balcony, leaned far over and kicked up her heels and burst into wild and rippling laughter at certain thoughts of Tawdry and of Butternut which flooded beneath her carmine cap of hair, until Lord Tawdry looking through the adjoining lattice said sternly: