"Hello!" she cried gaily. "I thought you'd surely 'phone over to see whether I needed to make my will or not. You're not much of a lawyer."
Roderick laughed. She was so frank and boyish that she put him quite at his ease.
"Well,—not knowing I was the family advocate, I didn't like to," he said slyly.
She laughed delightedly. "You're going to be after this, I can tell you. Daddy's out of town and he doesn't know yet!"
"There's no need to worry him by telling."
"Oh, but there just is. I haven't told a soul yet, and I nearly had to commit murder to keep it from Mother. Fred's in a pink fit every minute for fear I'll let it out. I've got heaps of fun holding it over his head. It makes him good and obedient. Is Lawyer Ed in?"
"No. Do you wish to see him?"
"No, of course not. I just wondered if he wouldn't keep house, though, for a few minutes, while you came along and joined the bunch. We're all going to make Alf take us for ice-cream. We spied him leaving here. Can't you come?"
"Thank you, but I'm afraid I couldn't leave," said Roderick, rather taken aback by her frankness. That ideal woman, who sat dimly enthroned in the recesses of his heart, never offered her favours, they had to be sued for, and she was apt to sit in judgment on the girl who departed from her strict rule.
"Come on, Les!" called a voice from the lingering group she had left. "Here's Alf. He's going to treat us all. Ho! A-a-lf!" The young ladies of Algonquin, had lived in such close proximity to each other from childhood that a playmate could always be summoned even from the other end of the town by a clarion call, and they had never seen any reason for changing their convenient method when long skirts and piled-up hair might have been supposed to demand a less artless manner. But then every one shouted across blocks, and besides, every one knew that Afternoon Tea Willie just dearly loved to be yelled at. He whirled about now, waved his hat, and came hurrying back, with the peculiar jerky irregular motion of his feet, that always marked his movements.