I put down the book and got up to go.

"Good night, then, and thank you, Mr. Latimer."

"Good night.... Oh, Miss--" He didn't say "Omar"--"there is a favor
you might do me."

"Sure!" I wondered what it could be.

"Those diamonds. I've got to have them, you know, to send them back to
their owner. I don't mind helping a--a person who helps himself to
other people's things, but I can't let him get away with his plunder
without being that kind of person myself. So--"

Why didn't I lie? Because there are some people you don't lie to, Tom
Dorgan. Don't talk to me, you bully, I'm savage enough. To have rings
and pins and ear-rings, a whole bagful of diamonds, and to haul 'em out
of your pocket and lay 'em on the table there before him!

"I wonder," he said slowly, as he put them away in his own pocket,
"what a man like me could do for a girl like you?"

"Reform her!" I snarled. "Show her how to get diamonds honestly."

Say, Tom, let's go in for bigger game.

III.

Oh, Mag, Mag, for heaven's sake, let me talk to you! No, don't say
anything. You must let me tell you. No--don't call the other girls.
I can't bear to tell this to anybody but you.

You know how I kicked when Tom hit on Latimer's as the place we were to
scuttle. And the harder I kicked the stubborner he got, till he swore
he'd do the job without me if I wouldn't come along. Well--this is the
rest of it.

The house, you know, stands at the end of the street. If you could
walk through the garden with the iron fence you'd come right down the
bluff on to the docks and out into East River. Tom and I came up to it
from the docks last night. It was dark and wet, you remember. The mud
was thick on my trousers--Nance Olden's a boy every time when it comes
to doing business.

"We'll blow it all in, Tom," I said, as we climbed. "We'll spend a
week at the Waldorf, and then, Tom Dorgan, we'll go to Paris. I want a
red coat and hat with chinchilla, like that dear one I lost, and a
low-neck satin gown, and a silk petticoat with lace, and a chain with
rhinestones, and--"

"Just wait, Sis, till you get out of this. And keep still."

"I can't. I'm so fidgety I must talk or I'll shriek."

"Well, you'll shut up just the same. Do you hear me?"

I shut up, but my teeth chattered so that Tom stopped at the gate.

"Look here, Nance, are you going to flunk? Say it now--yes or no."

That made me mad.

"Tom Dorgan," I said, "I'll bet you