“She said she’d ask me to lunch with her down-town, but she had spent almost all her allowance.”
“The idea of hinting to you in that bare-faced way! Now, if you had been a man it—”
“Would have been all right, of course. However, I know how confidential Effie always grows over a cup of tea, so I promptly invited her to lunch with me. After she had accepted, I found that I had only fifty cents to my name. Papa had gone down-town and, mamma had just borrowed a quarter from me!”
“My goodness, did you tell Effie that your head ached so badly that you couldn’t go?”
“And have her say that I was fretting myself ill over Jack? No, thank you. I excused myself a moment and went downstairs, for I had just remembered a habit Papa has of leaving money lying about on his desk. To my joy, I found a five-dollar bill in one of the drawers, and I took that, because I—”
“But weren’t you afraid to take it?”
“M—yes, but then one’s own people have to make up with one sometime or other. Well, we had a lovely time shopping, and I took Effie off to luncheon before she had had time to get cross matching samples. It was a lovely luncheon, and before we had finished Effie said she hoped I would visit her at Delavan in August!”
“H’m; I suppose she didn’t mention the fact that Jack expects to be in Canada from the last week in July to the first one in September, did she?”
“No; she didn’t. Oh, what a cat she is—and I asked her to take another ice on the strength of it! Well I paid the bill, tipped the waiter, and was just going out when the cashier came running after me, and oh, Emily, what do you think?”
“You had left your umbrella, of course.”