of course, was not a lie. "As for that
card, it's a mistake." Which it was indeed.

"But--Dorothea!" persisted Charlie Sands.

"Never in my life knew anybody named Dorothea. Did you, Aggie?"

"Never," said Aggie firmly.

Charlie Sands apologized and looked thoughtful. On Tish's remaining
rather injured, he asked us all out to dinner that night, and almost the
first thing he ordered was frogs' legs. Aggie got rather white about the
lips.

"I--I think I'll not take any," she said feebly. "I--I keep thinking of
Tish tickling their throats with the hairpin, and how Percy--"

We glared at her, but it was too late. Charlie Sands drew up his chair
and rested his elbows on the table.

"So there was a Percy as well as a Dorothea!" he said cheerfully. "I
might have known it. Now we'll have the story!"

TISH'S SPY

THE ADVENTURE OF THE RED-HEADED DETECTIVE, THE LADY CHAUFFEUR, AND THE
MAN WHO COULD NOT TELL THE TRUTH

I

It is easy enough, of course, to look back on our Canadian experience
and see where we went wrong. What I particularly resent is the attitude
of Charlie Sands.

I am writing this for his benefit. It seems to me that a clean statement
of the case is due to Tish, and, in less degree, to Aggie and myself.

It goes back long before the mysterious cipher. Even the incident of our
abducting the girl in the pink tam-o'-shanter was, after all, the
inevitable result of the series of occurrences that preceded it.

It is my intention to give this series of occurrences in their proper
order and without bias. Herbert Spencer says that every act of one's
life is the unavoidable result of every act that has preceded it.

Naturally, therefore, I begin with the engagement by Tish of a girl as
chauffeur; but even before that there were contributing causes. There
was the faulty rearing of the McDonald youth, for instance, and Tish's
aesthetic dancing. And afterward there was Aggie's hay fever, which made
her sneeze and let go of a rope at a critical moment. Indeed, Aggie's
hay fever may be said to be one of the fundamental causes, being the
reason we went to Canada.

It was like this: Along in June of the year before last, Aggie suddenly
announced that she was going to spend the summer in Canada.

"It's the best thing in the world for hay fever," she said, avoiding
Tish's eye. "Mrs. Ostermaier says she never sneezed once last year. The
Northern Lights fill the air with ozone, or something like that."