I was getting out of patience at all this mystery, when, during one of her brief absences, Ethel tapped at my door, and a minute later Kitty Reid dashed at me, while in the doorway appeared Cadge, scratching with one hand in a black bag.
"Oh, Helen, Helen," cried Kitty, laughing and half crying, "have you seen Cadge's exclusive?"
"Cadge! You were there? Cadge!"
"Sure," said that strange creature, her keen eyes glancing about my room; "you don't deserve half I've done for you—not letting me know beforehand—."
"Or me!" Kitty broke in. "Oh, I've have given a—a tube of chrome yellow to see you!"
"—but we've made the Row look like nineteen cents in a country where they don't use money. See you've got the fossils." Cadge nodded towards the papers I had been reading. "But the Star's worth the whole—now where the mischief—"
"Cadge! Show me!"
From the black bag she drew several sheets of paper, upon each of which was pasted a cutting from a newspaper, with pencilled notes in the margin; a handkerchief, a bunch of keys, six pointed pencils, a pen-knife, a purse, rather lean, a photograph of two kittens.
"There," she said, relieved at sight of these, "knew I couldn't have lost 'em. Brooklyn woman left 'em $5,000 in her will. They'll stand me in a good little old half column. Now—where—ah, here you are!"
She unfolded a Star clipping and proudly spread it upon my knee.