"My dear Bob," she said, "anybody who can buy all the cake he wants can usually get the—other things!"
His face clouded slightly.
"I hate to hear you talk like that, Christine," he began, "it's not fair to yourself—"
"How'd you know I was Puck?" Brother inquired genially. He made no pretense of including the lady in the conversation; for him she was simply not there.
"Oh, I'm not so ignorant as I look," the young man replied. "I don't believe you could stump me on anything you'd be likely to be—I've probably been 'em all myself. We were always rigging up at home. Didn't you use to do that, Tina?"
The lady shook her head decidedly.
"If I'd ever got hold of a—well, if I'd had a chance of things as nice as that biggest one's dragging through the dirt there, I'd have been doing something very different with it, I can assure you, Mr. Armstrong! I'd have been saving it."
"But at that age—" he protested.
"Oh, I knew real lace from imitation at that age, all right," she insisted.
"But you don't think of those things—you go in for the fun," he urged.