“No,” said Dick, “I honestly don’t think he’ll mind. I don’t believe he wants the market to go to smash on his account. And to me it means—well, I haven’t been here a day yet; and the chief gave me a week to find him and get an interview. So it means the biggest kind of a big beat, Miss Wales, and that means a juicy fee and a juicy fee means——” Dick stopped suddenly, bit his lip, and then laughed. “I didn’t use to be so mercenary, did I, Madeline? Then I have your consent, Miss Wales? Are you girls coming back with me?”
For the first part of the long ride Dick Blake was silent, his face puckered into deep wrinkles of thought. All at once he threw back his head and laughed merrily. “I’ve got it,” he said, “head-lines and all. Now we can talk. What did you do the little Jew out of, Madeline?”
“Oh, we were buying a duke for Eleanor Watson,” explained Madeline tantalizingly. “She wants one, you know.”
The worried look came back to Dick’s fine gray eyes. “Go slow, Madeline. You were buying—— Eleanor wants a duke?”
Madeline took pity on him and unwrapped the dainty figurine, which Dick duly admired.
“By the way, Miss Wales,” he began suddenly, “you don’t know where Jasper J. went from Grasmere, I suppose.”
Betty repeated what the old gentleman had said about the superiority of French roads.
“Then I suppose I’d better cross the channel to-night,” sighed Dick, “and here’s where I leave this ’bus. Wish I could go home with you and see the rest of the ‘Merry Hearts’ and have a good talk. Good-bye, Miss Wales. So long, Madeline. See you again somewhere over here.” And he was gone.
“Well,” Madeline told the others, when they reached home, “we’ve got the duke and he’s a darling, and we’ve found out the name of the Grasmere magnate, and Betty’s been being a B. A. again—to whom in the world do you guess, but Dick Blake. It will be in all the New York papers to-morrow morning. How’s that for a strenuous day of it?”