as most indignant. He absolutely refused to allow me to be a
manicurist. And he asked me to take a day off with him and let him show
me New York. And he offered, as attractions, moving-picture shows and a
drive on a Fifth Avenue bus, and feeding peanuts to the animals in the
park. And if I insisted upon a chaperon I might bring one of the nurses.
We're to meet at the soda-water fountain in the Grand Central Station.
He said, 'The day cannot begin too soon.'"

"Oh, Anita!" shrieked the chorus.

Lord Deptford, who as the newspapers had repeatedly informed the
American public, had come to the Flaggs' country-place to try to marry
Anita Flagg, was amused.

"What an awfully jolly rag!" he cried. "And what are you going to do
about it?"

"Nothing," said Anita Flagg. "The reporters have been making me
ridiculous for the last three years; now I have got back at one of them!
And," she added, "that's all there is to that!"

That night, however, when the house party was making toward bed, Sister
Anne stopped by the stairs and said to Lord Deptford: "I want to hear
you call me Sister."

"Call you what?" exclaimed the young man. "I will tell you," he
whispered, "what I'd like to call you!"

"You will not!" interrupted Anita. "Do as I tell you and say Sister
once. Say it as though you meant it."

"But I don't mean it," protested his lordship. "I've said already what
I...."

"Never mind what you've said already," commanded Miss Flagg. "I've heard
that from a lot of people. Say Sister just once."

His lordship frowned in embarrassment.

"Sister!" he exclaimed. It sounded like the pop of a cork.

Anita Flagg laughed unkindly and her beautiful shoulders shivered as
though she were cold.

"Not a bit like it, Deptford," she said. "Good-night."

Later Helen Page, who came to her room to ask her about a horse she was
to ride in the morning, found her ready for bed but standing by the open
window looking out toward the great city to the south.

When she turned Miss Page saw something in her eyes that caused that
young woman to shriek with amazement.

"Anita!" she exclaimed. "You crying! What in Heaven's name can make you
cry?"

It was not a kind speech, nor did Miss Flagg receive it kindly. She
turned upon the tactless intruder.

"Suppose," cried Anita fiercely, "a man thought you were worth forty
dollars a month--honestly didn't know!--honestly believed you were poor
and worked for your living, and still said your smi