ous grip of a monkey.

"I see a lady!" she announced with promptitude.

"Tall young lady--brown eyes, yellow hair, ver' beautiful," Conny echoed
from the floor, as she leaned forward and intently studied the queen of
hearts.

"But she make-a you lot of trouble," Patty added, frowning over a
blister on his hand. "I see li'l' quarrel."

Mr. Gilroy's eyes narrowed. In spite of himself, he commenced to be
interested.

"You like-a her very much," pronounced Conny from below.

"But you never see her any more," chimed in Patty.
"One--two--three--four months, you no see her, no spik with her." She
looked up into his startled eyes. "_But you think about her every day!_"

He made a quick movement of withdrawal, and Patty hastily added a
further detail.

"Dat tall young lady, she ver' unhappy too. She no laugh no more like
she used."

He arrested the movement and waited with a touch of anxious curiosity to
hear what was coming next.

"She feel ver' bad--ver' cross, ver' unhappy. She thinks always 'bout
that li'l' quarrel. Four months she sit and wait--but you never come
back."

Mr. Gilroy rose abruptly and strode to the window.

His unexpected visitors had dropped from the sky at the psychological
moment. For two straight hours that afternoon he had been sitting at his
desk grappling with the problem, which they, in their broken English,
were so ably handling. Should he swallow a great deal of pride, and make
another plea for justice? St. Ursula's vacation was at hand; in a few
days more she would be gone--and very possibly she would never come
back. The world at large was full of men, and Miss Jellings had a taking
way.

Conny continued serenely to study her cards.

"One--More--Chance!" She spoke with the authority of a Grecian sibyl.
"You try again, you win. No try, you lose."

Patty leaned over Conny's shoulder, eager to supply a salutary bit of
advice.

"Dat tall young lady too much--" she hesitated a moment for fitting
expression--"too much head in air. Too _bossy_. You make-a her mind?
Understand?"

Conny, gazing at the round-faced, chubby Jack of Diamonds, had received
a new idea.

"I see 'nother man," she murmured. "Red hair and--and--_fat_. Not too
good-looking but--"

"_Very dangerous!_" interpolated Patty. "You have no time to waste. He
comes soon."

Now, they had fabricated this detail out of nothing in the world but
pure fancy and the Jack of Diamonds, but as it happened, they had
touched