"Ring that bell," she ordered sharply.
Gracie obeyed, wondering what was to be the consequence of her fresh effort. She had not long to wait. Her mother's maid entered.
"Tell Huxton to pack Miss Gracie's trunks ready for Tuxedo. She will leave for Vernor Court by the midday express. Her governesses will accompany her."
The maid retired. In an instant all hope had fled, and Gracie was reduced to hasty penitence.
"Please, momma, don't send me out to the country. I'm sorry for what I've done to-day, real sorry—but I've just had the fidgets all day, what with pop going away and—and that silly Gordon never coming near us, or—or anything. True, momma, I won't be naughty ever again. 'Deed I won't. Oh, say you won't send me off by myself," she urged, coming coaxingly to her mother's side. "There's Jacky Molyneux going to take me a run in his automobile to-morrow afternoon, and we're going to Garden City, and he always gives me heaps of ice-cream. Oh, momma, don't send me off to that dreadful Tuxedo."
At all times Mrs. Carbhoy was easily cajoled, and just now she was feeling so miserable and lonely since her husband had been called away on urgent business, she knew not where. Then here was another of Gordon's troublesome letters in her lap. So in her trouble she yielded to her only remaining belonging. But she forthwith sat her long-legged daughter on a footstool at her feet, and as penance made her listen to the reading of the letter which had just arrived. Somehow, in view of the previous letters from her son, Mrs. Carbhoy felt it to be impossible to face this new one without support, even if that support were only that of her wholly inadequate thirteen-year-old daughter.
"DEAREST MUM:
"Since Cain got busy shooting up his brother Abel, since Delilah became a slave to the tonsorial art and practiced on Samson, since Jael turned her carpentering stunts to considerable account by hammering tacks into poor Sisera's head, right through the long ages down to the record-breaking achievements of the champion prevaricator Ananias, I guess the crookedness of human nature has progressed until it has reached the pitch of a fine art, such as is practiced by legislators, diplomats and New York police officers.
"This is a sweeping statement, but I contend it is none the less true.
"I'd say that in examining the facts we need to study the real meaning of 'crookedness.' We must locate its cause as well as effect. Now 'crookedness' is the divergence from a straight line, which some fool man spent a lifetime in discovering was the shortest route from one given point to another. No doubt that fellow thought he was making some discovery, but it kind of seems to me any chump outside the bug-house and not under the influence of drink would know it without having to spend even a summer vacation finding it out, and, anyway, I don't guess it's worth shouting about.