“You are coming to my house for Christmas dinner, and I’ve kept track of everything in a little book and I’m going to pay you every cent, truly I am, and we’ll have the best time.
“But I was going to tell you,” she paused in her mad ramble, “I was——”
“Listen!” Miss Diurno held up a hand for silence, “Cordie, someone is paging your name. Here! Over here!” she called to the bell boy.
“Telephone,” said the boy.
The three sat in silence until Cordie returned.
“What do you think!” she exclaimed as she came bounding toward them. “It was James, my friend the bundle carrier at the phone. They’ve worked fast. They raided the room of—of the hawk-eyed man and they found James’ silver fox skins. And Auntie, I’m going to have father buy them as a present for you. Won’t that be g-grand!”
“I should think it might,” smiled her aunt, giving her arm an affectionate squeeze. “But, my dear, you hadn’t finished telling Lucile.”
“Oh! That’s a short story now. When I saw how good and kind you were,” Cordie said, turning to Lucile, “when I saw the work there was to do and everything, I was fascinated. I just wanted to play I was just what you thought me to be. So I called up my father and made him let me do it. That was all there was to it.
“But Auntie!” she exclaimed, turning to Miss Diurno. “Why did you steal my badge of serfdom?”
“Your what?”