"Go! Go!" he said to them in a voice that sounded more like a croak. "Go to your mother! I'll come in a moment!"
There was something in his voice that made the girls obey, though reluctantly.
"What is the matter now?" murmured Gloria, impatiently. "Didn't you get it? Didn't he like it, Kath?"
"Yes, and he's crazy about it. I'm sure I don't know what's the matter. Some tiresome old business probably. It's always that way."
As the inner door closed on them, Gloria's perplexed voice asked:
"What did that girl mean 'Rufus'?"
[CHAPTER XI]
IT WAS Mrs. Dunlap who took command of the situation, stepping into the picture at exactly the most awful moment of revelation when several lives seemed about to fall into chaos.
"Oh, Mr. Oliver," she said in her pleasant, commanding tone coming forward with a fountain pen and a bit of blue paper in her hand, until she stood exactly before the shrinking girl, and the ghastly man, "Good morning! I won't detain you but an instant. I just stepped in to ask if you would kindly endorse this check for me so that I can cash it. I found myself suddenly out of money, and near your office, and I knew you would help me out."
She held out the check and pen, and the desperate man reached for them as a drowning man would reach for a rope flung out to him. He even tried to summon a smile of graciousness to his stiff lips, and naturalness to his voice as he assented: