"Are you going to give her money?" asked Frances in surprise.
"Doesn't she look as if she needed it?"
"She is a fake. I've seen her ever since I can remember—always just like this. She wouldn't dare beg in town, but we are so far out—well, if you are really determined to do it, here's a quarter."
Gail took the proffered coin, added a shining dollar to it, and stepping to the door where the palsied beggar stood mumbling and whining a pitiful hard luck tale, she pressed the silver into the leathery, claw-like hand, smiled a sympathetic smile and bade the old woman a God-speed.
Frances stayed for dinner that evening, and as the family gathered around the table for this, the merriest hour of the whole day, the President suddenly clapped his hand against his pockets, searched rapidly through them, and finally brought forth a crumpled sheet of paper, daubed with many ink blots and tipsy hieroglyphics, which read, "No more beggars, tramps and vagabuns allowed on these promises. We have already given away enuf to keep a army. There are two dogs and two men in this family—so bewair!"
Even the presence of Peace, the author, did not prevent an explosion of delighted shrieks from the little company, but the child merely fixed her brown eyes, somber with reproof, upon the perfectly grave face of the Doctor of Laws, and demanded, "Now, grandpa, what made you take it down?"
"I didn't, child," he defended. "It had blown down, I think, and lodged about the door-knob. I thought it was a hand-bill, and rescued it as I came in."
"Where had you put it?" asked Cherry, grinning superciliously at the distorted characters on the soiled paper.
"On the side of the house by the front door," she confessed. "That's where I put that one."
"That one! Are there more?" laughed Frances, whose affection for this original bit of femininity had only increased with the months of their acquaintance.