wn to our
business. I've got a plan that's more fun than the Jefferson letters,
and that will make us a lot of money, Miss Thompson. And it's easy and
it's sure fire. It depends, as I said, upon the remarkable coincidence
of your likeness to Mrs. De Peyster."

"Yes?" Mrs. De Peyster managed to say.

"You've read of her, of course; stiffest swell of the lot," went
on the young gentleman rapidly, in clipped phrases oddly unlike the
sonorous sentences of the Reverend Mr. Pyecroft. "Looks down on most
of the Four Hundred as _hoi polloi_. She's in Europe now, and the
papers say she won't be back until the very end of summer. We can't do
a thing till then; have to lie low and wait. You need money, I heard
you say; I suppose you're afraid to hock this twinkler"--touching the
pearl pendant. "Police probably watching the pawnshops and would nab
you. Well, I'll stake you till Mrs. De Peyster comes back."

"Stake me?" breathed Mrs. De Peyster.

"Yes. Give you, both of you, what money you need."

"And--and when--Mrs. De Peyster comes back?"

Young Mr. Pyecroft chortled with delight.

"Say, this scheme's the best ever! The day we learn Mrs. De Peyster
has landed, we dress you up as a top-notcher--gad, but we can make you
look the part!--we put you in a swell carriage, with her coat of arms
painted on it--and you go around to Tiffany's and all the other swell
shops where in the mean time I'll have learned Mrs. De Peyster has
charge accounts. You select the most valuable articles in the shop,
and then in the most casual, dignified manner,--I can coach you on how
to put on the dignity,--you remark, 'Charge to my account, and I'll
just take it along with me.' And off you go, with a diamond necklace
under your arm. And same thing at all the shops. Then we duck before
the thing breaks, and divide the fruits of our industry and superior
intelligence, as the economists say. Isn't that one great little
game!"

Mrs. De Peyster stared at his face, grinning like an elated gargoyle;
herself utterly limp, her every nerve a filament of icy horror.

"Well, what do you say, girls?" prompted Mr. Pyecroft.

Mrs. De Peyster at first could say nothing at all. Whereupon the young
man, gleeful over his invention, prompted her again.

"I--can't--can't do it," she gulped out.

"Can't do it!" He stared at her, amazed. "Say, do you realize what
you're passing up?"

"I can't do it," repeated Mrs. De Peyster.

"Why?" he demanded.

She did no