As the talk was repeated, the listener's face grew stern, and when Polly came to the end of her story he fingered the little silver elephant upon his desk before he spoke.
"You say that the board is not what it should be?"
"It is poor, dreadfully poor, Mr. Randolph. Lately they've had stale meat and sour bread—and hardly any fruit or green vegetables all summer long!"
"Yet her accounts stand for expensive roasts, lamb chops, early fruits when they are highest in price—the best of everything!"
"They never get on the table," asserted Polly. "Miss Nita and the others have spoken again and again of their wretched living. And the cooking is awful!"
"I am told that she pays her cook fifty dollars a month."
"I don't know what she pays," Polly replied, "but they seldom have good cooking. She is changing help all the time."
"We have trusted her implicitly," the president mused. "Her father was a man of undoubted honor."
"I don't see that it would be much worse to steal from the Home than to take Miss Twining's money or Miss Nita's cards or—"
"Cards? From Miss Sterling?" broke in Nelson Randolph quickly.