"One guess'll do," said Daisy, into the phone; "it's you."
"Correct," certified the voice of Jimmy Knight, the jitney-driver.
Then followed a conversation of which, though the half of it could not of course be heard from Jean's post at the dough-board, the tenor was plainly discernible in Daisy's registry of dimplings, and tiltings of the head, and teasing pauses; and the final softly-yielded, "All right, I will,—bye-bye," as she hung up the phone.
When Jimmy Knight had called her "stranger" through the transmitter, this had merely been humorous irony; for Daisy Nixon and the young man who had first piloted her to the Harrison house, and later to the dancing pavilion at the park, had seen each other at least once, and very often twice, each week since.
On the evening after the telephone conversation just mentioned, Daisy, as she walked in her brisk, virile way to the trysting-place under the trees by the stone drive-gate, wishing that housemaids could afford suits instead of having to wear waists and skirts, knew that she was going to spend the evening at "a friend's house"; but she did not know that the friend was Jimmy's married sister, Mrs. Tom Farrell. Nor did she know that Jimmy had, in advance, instructed Mrs. Farrell something like this: "Now, Bet, this evening you'll have the chance o' your life to help little Jimmy pull off something. Clean up the suite—yes, yes, of course I know you always do have it clean, honey; but I mean, clean it extra good, to-night—and spruce yourself up, and see that Tom gets his semi-annual haircut and has a clean sweater on; and fix little Tommy up real cute. You see, it's this way: I'm going to bring a girl around with me to-night—the best girl in——"
"M'h'm," Mrs. Betty Farrell had yawned, into the telephone, "go on—shoot. I got something else to do than stand with this phone to my ear, Jim, and listen to you rave."
"You sure have, Bet," Jimmy soothed; "I know that. Well, as I say, I'm bringing this girl around, and I want her to get the home idea. See?—the home idea! Then she'll be all ready for the proposition I intend to spring, on the way home——"
"Since when," interrupted the practical voice at the other end of the line, "have you started your bank account, Jimmy?"
"Sa-ay, that's a nasty one," Jimmy had protested; "what do you want to spring a thing like that on me for, Bet, when you know how I hate banks. I draw down twenty-five a week, as you know, and I'll slap on some accident insurance, and we'll rent furnished apartments——"