“I hope that cackle I hear from the kitchen means an egg, and the egg another kiss,” remarked the old Colonel, smiling at her. “I am very glad you are here. You’ll be a great comfort to Mary Louise, I can assure you, for she has already exhausted our resources and I’m quite sure she’s on the ragged edge of nothing.”
“What’s wrong, Colonel?” asked Josie, as Aunt Sallie brought in her coffee.
“Everything—and nothing,” replied Colonel Hathaway, in a way, testily, and yet with an amusing expression. “But here she comes and you can get all the points of the terrible tragedy.”
Mary Louise entered the breakfast room briskly, as if fully expecting to find her old friend there, for she knew that Josie would not lose a minute in answering her summons. Indeed, her telegram of the evening before quite settled the matter as far as she was concerned.
“What’s gone wrong?” she asked again, when they had seated themselves, after the exchange of a hearty kiss, at the table.
Mary Louise, in a despondent voice, replied: “Everything has gone wrong, dear. There was a beautiful automobile at the auto show a while ago, and as Gran’pa Jim’s big old car had no one, from Uncle Sam to a grasshopper, to care for it any longer, I induced him to let me trade it in for the beauty I have referred to. I didn’t care much for Gran’pa’s rattletrap, but its wheels went round nevertheless.”
“I know,” nodded Josie, over her ham and eggs.
Then Mary Louise went on about her discovery of Danny Dexter, and his quaint manners, and the methods he employed in abdication.
“We’ve tried every method we could think of,” concluded the girl, “and the result is that yesterday we wired you, at Gran’pa’s suggestion.”
“What!” in amazement. “Do you mean that the dear Colonel has at last acquired sufficient confidence in my ability to entrust me with a job of this sort?”