a penny," declared
our faithful handmaiden. "And I'm sure you've earnt that twenty-five
thousand if anyone ever did. You've had as much care and worry about
them brats as you would if they'd been your own."

"Huldah," I said severely, "there is a pretty stiff penalty for
obtaining money under false pretences."

"After all the pains we took to make things lively for him, so he
wouldn't get bored and think he was having a poor time!" regretted
Pythagoras.

"And us watching every word we spoke so as not to give it away,"
wailed Emerald.

"Cake's all dough," muttered Demetrius.

Ptolemy regarded the three disapprovingly. He had the old inscrutable
look, the look that foreboded mischief, in his eyes.

"You bungled, you fool kids!" he said in disgust, "and Huldah, what
did you want to let on to mudder for that he thought we was hers? You
ought to have torn up the note he left and just said he'd put
twenty-five thousand in the bank for her."

"Huh! you're just jealous because you weren't in the Uncle Izzy deal
yourself," jeered Pythagoras. "You always think you're the only one
that can do anything right."

"I wish you had been here, Polly," said Huldah, "I am sure you could
have worked it through somehow."

"I wish I had stayed and put it across," he answered. "If you and the
kids would only learn not to blab everything you know. It's the only
way to work anything. Minute you tell a thing, it's all off."

There was still a great deal of development work to be put on
Ptolemy's moral standard.

"You'll find, my lad," remonstrated Rob, "that honesty is the best
policy."

"I'd have been perfectly honest about it," he defended. "I would have
told him the truth, and how our parents had deserted us, and how
mudder took us in when we were homeless and was bringing us up like
her own because she hadn't got any, and how stepdaddy wanted to turn
us out, and she wouldn't let him, and then he would have decided
against stepdaddy and given mudder the money so she could keep us."

"Ptolemy," I said warningly, "there is a way of telling the truth, or
rather of coloring white lies with enough truth to make them deceive,
that is more dishonorable than an out and out lie."

"Tell me, Ptolemy," asked Silvia, "how did you know about that offer
of five thousand dollars for each child?"

"I overheard it," he said guardedly; "but I can't remember where."

"He heard me say so," confessed Huldah.

"It was when he first come here