“Very well,” said the girl, in demure tones, though lambent mirth still flickered, golden, in the depths of the brown eyes. “If you persist, I can only suggest that you come back when Judge Ackroyd is here. You won’t find him particularly amenable to humor, particularly when perpetrated by a practical joker in masquerade.”
“Discovered,” murmured Average Jones. “I shouldn’t have vaunted my poor French. But must I really take my little friends all the way back? You suggested to the mystic voice within that I might be invited inside.”
“You seem a decidedly unconventional person,” began the other with dawning disfavor.
“Conventionality, like charity, begins at home,” he replied quickly. “And one would hardly call this advertisement a pattern of formal etiquette.”
“True enough,” she admitted, dimpling, and Average Jones was congratulating himself on his diplomacy, when the querulous voice broke in again, this time too low for his ears.
“I don’t ask you the real reason for your extraordinary call,” pursued the girl with a glint of mischief in her eyes, after she had responded in an aside, “but auntie thinks you’ve come to steal my dog. She thinks that of every one lately.”
“Auntie? Your dog? Then you’re Sylvia Graham. I might have known it.”
“I don’t know how you might have known it. But I am Sylvia Graham—if you insist on introducing me to yourself.”
“Miss Graham,” said the visitor promptly and gravely, “let me present A.V.R.E. Jones: a friend—”
“Not the famous Average Jones!” cried the girl. “That is why your face seemed so familiar. I’ve seen your picture at Edna Hale’s. You got her ‘blue fires’ back for her. But really, that hardly explains your being here, in this way, you know.”