e only
too glad to have a cozy home and a--a--pleasant husband and--all that. So
we'll go out on Saturday afternoon and look them over and pick out a good
one. Then I'll invite her to visit me for a week, and you and I will both
be busy so Father-in-law will have to entertain her, and she'll cut out
old Whiskers in no time at all."

Eveley flung out her hands jubilantly.

Mrs. Severs showed no enthusiasm. "That is what I wanted to tell you. He
can't. He is already married."

Eveley dropped into a chair. "Married!" she stammered. "You told me
Dody's mother was dead."

"She is, of course. But what I did not tell you is this. Three years ago
while Dody was in France, father must have sort of lost his mind or
something, for without a minute's warning, he up and married somebody--a
woman, of course. When Dody got home from the war she was not there, and
when he asked about her, father just sort of laughed and looked sheepish,
and said, 'Oh, she's gone on a visit.' 'Where to?' Dody asked. 'Oh,
somewhere around,' said father. 'Is she coming back?' asked Dody. 'Holy
Mackinaw, I hope not,' said father, and that is the last we ever heard of
her. But of course he is still married."

It was a hard blow, but Eveley rallied at last, though slowly. "Don't
worry," she said monotonously. "There is another adjustment. Just keep
happy--and give me time."

CHAPTER VIII

SHE MEETS A DEMONSTRATOR

"You've simply got to sneak off on some pretext or another, and meet me
at the Doric agency at three o'clock for a demonstration. They say it is
perfectly wonderful--why, it hardly takes a look of gas to go a thousand
miles, and its tires are literally cast iron."

This was her summons by telephone. And Nolan, determined not to desert
trusting little Eveley to the tender mercies of motor sharks, went to the
Middle Member, whose position he confidently expected one day to possess,
and announced that important business of a personal nature required his
presence that afternoon. And because Nolan never abused privileges--or if
he did was never detected in the act--and because his firm was composed
of human beings and not the granite machines common to fiction, Nolan
encountered no difficulty.

And Eveley went to her own employer, and smiling seductively upon him,
said vaguely that some awfully important and unexpected things had come
up, and could she please get off at three, if she would work particularly
hard in the meantime to m