"In New York," retorted Cassy, who had never been anywhere else, physically at least, though mentally her little feet had trod the streets of Milan, the boards of the Scala.
"It can't be much different in Patagonia," replied this lady, who, to save her life, could not have told whether the land was Asiatic or African, nor who, to save her soul—if the latter were still salvable—could not have told that it was neither. "Besides," she added, "I was only thinking of your poor, dear papa."
Cassy said nothing. She stood up. She was making for the door and the charm of the scented streets.
Ma Tamby sighed, rose and followed. It was the devil's own job. Housebreaking must be easier!
XIV
Cassy's department-store investments reached her the next day. Her father, who opened the door to them, fell back before the sum total of the C. O. D. With an arm in a sling, he could not hold the packages, much less pay for them, and he gasped as he called for aid.
The money that Cassy then produced seemed to him darkly mysterious and although he believed as firmly in her virtue, as, before the break, he had believed in the maestria of his own right hand, none the less, in addition to aid, he exacted light.
Cassy, dumping the packages on her bed, occupied herself in verifying the change which amounted to one cent. Then she sketched it.
His surprise fell away. The mythical catamount, the imaginary concert, the ponderable subsidy—two hundred and fifty, less ten per cent.—seemed to him natural and an unnatural world.