"Is Mr. Symington there now?" asked Jean. Mabel thanked her from the bottom of a heart that couldn't prompt a single word at that supreme moment.
"No, but he said he was going some day," said Elsie. That was all. Mabel had seen a blaze of sunshine and then blackness again.
"Oh," said the robust, unheeding Jean, "what do your people say to that?"
"Papa says he won't have me butchered," said Elsie with a radiant smile.
"Look here," said the fencing girl, with her eyes still searching that "wild flower of a face" of Elsie's. "Will your father come and see my tenements?"
The answer of Elsie became historic in the girls' club.
"I think he will," said she. "He was up the Ferris wheel last night."
CHAPTER XXVI
Under Royal Patronage
Mrs. Leighton made use of the fact of the Clutterbuck's being in London to write to the Professor's wife.