Grace took out of her bag a guest towel she was embroidering. It was the last of the half dozen towels she had worked for Jessica's hope chest. She was not fond of needlework. She preferred to spend her spare time playing golf and tennis, or riding and walking. This, as well as the hemstitched table cloth and napkins she had completed for Nora, was a labor of love. Now as she bent painstakingly over her work, she smiled to herself and wove a tender thread of loyalty and love into the pattern.
A long clear trill caused her to raise her head quickly and spring to her feet with, "Here they are, at last!" She ran to meet them.
Three girls, or rather three young women, came loitering through the gate and up the walk, laughing gayly at something the girl in the center was relating for their benefit. "Now what has Hippy done?" guessed Grace shrewdly.
"You might know it was something about him," said Jessica Bright. "This time it was a case of what was done to him. Tell the lady all over again, Nora."
"It certainly was funny," dimpled Nora. "You see, Grace, Hippy and Edith and I were going for a ride, last night, in his new car. We waited and waited for him and couldn't imagine why he didn't come. About ten o'clock he came tearing along at a speed that would have made a traffic officer turn pale. Edith and I were still sitting on the porch. I pretended I was dreadfully offended until he told me where he had been, then Edith and I laughed until we almost cried."
"Where had he been?" asked Grace curiously.
The three girls giggled in unison.
"Locked in the cellar," returned Nora mirthfully. "He was all ready to go for his car when he happened to remember that he wanted a wrench from the tool chest in the cellar. His father is away this week and there was no one in the house but the cook. She was all ready to go away for the evening, too. She didn't know Hippy was in the cellar, so she locked all the doors, the cellar door included, and went on her way rejoicing. Hippy said he pounded and shouted and howled and wailed and pounded some more. Can't you imagine just how funny he must have looked? He couldn't climb out of the cellar windows, for they are too small and he is too fat, so he had to stay there until almost ten o'clock. He says he sat on the cellar steps most of the time and thought of the happy past. At last the cook came home and when he heard her walking around upstairs he pounded and shouted again. She thought he was a burglar, just as though a burglar would make all that noise, and wasn't going to let him out. He insists that he ruined his voice forever in trying to convince her that he was himself. He says his frenzied pleadings finally touched her adamant heart, and she opened the cellar door very cautiously at the rate of about a sixteenth of an inch per minute."
Grace laughed with the others, as Nora finished. "Poor Hippy," she commented, "he is always falling into difficulties. I must ask him about his evening in the cellar."
"Yes, do," urged Nora. "He tried to swear Edith and me to secrecy, but we refused to be sworn."