“No, I hadn’t. I—I, that five-dollar bill was a counterfeit which papa was keeping as an object lesson to mamma, who had gotten it in change!”
“You might have known that no man with a wife and grown daughter would leave five good dollars in an unlocked drawer, dear. Did Effie—”
“Loan it to me? She hadn’t quite enough, and I don’t know what I should have done if Frances had not happened to come in. Effie said that she did not mind borrowing from Frances, because she—she was quite like a sister to her! And now I shall have to make Papa angry by coaxing for money to pay for all those ices Effie ate on false pretenses, and w—worse yet, she and Frances will have the pleasure of laughing over it together!”
“And telling Jack about it, too,” gasped the girl with the dimple in her chin, helplessly.
“Of course I know they will do that,” sobbed the victim. “But I hardly thought that even an intimate friend would be unpleasant enough to remind me of it!” And she buried her face in the cushions and wept.
“Then you are not going to the club this afternoon? Shall I tell them that you are busy with the dressmaker, or the dentist? They know that you can make everybody else wait.”
“Tell them nothing. I shall go—and complain of a cold in the head, which will explain the pinkness of my nose and eyes.”
“But will any of them believe you?”
“All of them. You know those horrid quinine tablets Evelyn is always wanting people to try—well, I shall take one of them publicly. You don’t suppose that any one will suspect me of doing it unnecessarily, do you?”
The girl with the dimple in her chin shuddered. “Impossible,” she said.