“Yes, to-morrow if possible. Monday sure. You can arrange it. Why, if Mrs. Bracebridge asked you you’d go fast enough, and no one would think anything about it. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes,” she admitted slowly.
“Well, then, why not now?”
“It’s always so much harder to work out a falsehood,” she replied thoughtfully.
“I know it, but you can come. Won’t you?”
“Won’t you wait a little while?” she pleaded. “It’s so very sudden. I’m afraid.”
“Not a day, sweet, that I can help. Can’t you see how I feel? Look in my eyes. Will you?”
“Yes,” she replied sorrowfully, and yet with a strange thrill of affection. “I will.”
CHAPTER XXIII
The business of arranging for this sudden departure was really not so difficult as it first appeared. Jennie proposed to tell her mother the whole truth, and there was nothing to say to her father except that she was going with Mrs. Bracebridge at the latter’s request. He might question her, but he really could not doubt Before going home that afternoon she accompanied Lester to a department store, where she was fitted out with a trunk, a suit-case, and a traveling suit and hat. Lester was very proud of his prize. “When we get to New York I am going to get you some real things,” he told her. “I am going to show you what you can be made to look like.” He had all the purchased articles packed in the trunk and sent to his hotel. Then he arranged to have Jennie come there and dress Monday for the trip which began in the afternoon.