k
and--and----Oh, what's the use? Give my regards to Europe, will you?
Good-by!" And with that we shakes hands and I breaks away.

"I don't wish to seem curious," says Mr. Robert, as we walks out to his
cab, "but--er--is this something recent?"

"Not very," says I. "We've met before."

"Then allow me," says he, "to congratulate you on your good taste."

"Thanks!" says I. "Same to you; and I ain't got so much on you at that,
eh?"

We drops the subject there; but Mr. Robert seems so pleased over
something or other that we'd gone twenty blocks before he remembers what
brought me up.

"Oh, by the way," says he, "I suppose there'll be no end of row about my
forgetting to send down those contracts. The Governor was wild, wasn't
he?"

"He was wild, all right," says I, "without knowin' whether you'd forgot
'em or not."

"But when you 'phoned him," says Mr. Robert, "of course he----"

"Ah, say!" says I. "Do I look like a trouble hunter? I 'phoned
Piddie--told him to sneak 'em out, send 'em down, and keep his mouth
shut. All you got to do is act innocent."

Never mind the hot air Mr. Robert passes out after that. What tickles me
most is the package that came for me yesterday by messenger. I finds it
on my plate at dinner time; so both the old ladies was on hand when I
opens it.

"Why, Torchy!" says Aunt Martha, lookin' at me shocked and scandalized.
"A young lady's picture!"

"Yep," says I. "Ain't she a dream, though?"

And, say, Martha'd been lecturin' me yet if it hadn't been for Zenobia
breakin' in.

"Do remember, Martha," says she, "that you were not always sixty-three
years old, and that once----Why, bless me! This must be Alicia Vernon's
child. Is there a name on the back? There is! Verona Ashton Hemmingway,
heiress to all that is left of poor Dick's fortune. She's a beauty, just
like her mother."

"She's all of that," says I.

It didn't make any diff'rence to Aunt Martha who she was, though. She
didn't think it right for young ladies to give away their pictures to
young men. She was for askin' me how long I'd known Miss Vee, and----

"There, now, Martha," said Zenobia, "suppose we don't."

That's how it is I can guess who it was blew themselves for a corkin'
big silver frame, and put Vee's picture in it, and stood it on my
bureau. Course, Vee's on her way to foreign parts now, and there's no
tellin' when she's comin' back. Besides, there ain't anything in it,
anyway. But somehow that picture in the