“I’d give the whole world to be able to stay over,” said Cologne, plaintively.
“Just one more cup of tea!” cried Dorothy, “then we’ll start for home in the yellow car.”
“I’m glad it’s dark,” said Tavia, mischievously glancing at Ned, “the color combination is such wretched taste!”
“I’m sorry, Cologne,” said Dorothy, “that you can’t stay and come with us to-morrow to call on Miss Mingle.”
Ned was cranking up the car, and the girls for a moment were just a confused mass of muffs and feathers and kisses, then they jumped in, and drove home to the Riverside apartment.
CHAPTER XVI
A STARTLING DISCOVERY
“How funny!” exclaimed Tavia, as she and Dorothy began to ascend the stairs in the deep, dark hallway of the apartment house that Aunt Winnie owned, and in which Miss Mingle and her sister lived. It was six stories high and had two apartments on each floor. A porter, with the unconcern of long habit, carelessly carried a rosy, cooing baby on his shoulder up the long flights of stairs, his destination being an apartment on the sixth floor. The mother of the child climbed up after him deep in thought, probably as to what to have for dinner that day.
“No, there are no elevators,” explained Dorothy. “This house is one of the early apartments, built before the people knew the necessity for such luxuries as elevators.”
“Luxuries!” said Tavia, stopping to catch her breath, “if elevators are luxuries in a six-story house, I’ll vote for luxuries!”
“Just one more flight,” said Dorothy, “it’s the fifth floor, the left apartment, I believe,” she consulted a card as they paused on a landing.