“Is she—a lady?”
Dick’s eyes twinkled.
“Elk says she’s not, but Elk is prejudiced. She has money and education and breed. Whether or not these three assets are sufficient to constitute a lady, I don’t know. Elk says not, but, as I say, Elk is considerably prejudiced.”
She sat silent, her mind in a whirl.
“I have an idea that you want help . . . about your brother,” said Dick quietly. “He is frightening you, isn’t he?”
She nodded.
“I thought so. He is puzzling me. I know all about him, his salary and prospects and his queer masquerade under an alias. I’m not troubling about that, because boys love those kinds of mysteries. Unfortunately, they are expensive mysteries, and I want to know how he can afford to keep up this suddenly acquired position.”
He mentioned a sum and she gasped.
“It costs all that,” said Dick. “Elk, who has a passion for exact detail, and who knows to a penny what the riding suit costs, supplied me with particulars.”
She interrupted him with such a gesture of despair that he felt a brute.