d a new Works
with.... Won't you please help me make him take it?"

But what her mother may have replied to this request failed to overtake
Cally, flying down the hall to the telephone....

* * * * *

The bedroom conference, it was seen, had not been wholly fruitless,
after all. Mrs. Heth's last stand for Hugo--like Hugo's last
afternoon--had taken a slant not anticipated by her, but at least
wholesome and moral in its effects. Cally's dreaded accusing interview
in the study gave place, beyond all imagining, to an unpremeditated
outpouring by telephone, in which her chief fear was only of making a
perfect little silly of herself. And lastly, Mr. Heth, called summarily
from a directors' meeting at the Fourth National Bank, was overflowed
with such a wave of feminine incoherence and emotionalism as he found
great difficulty in associating with his usually self-contained little
daughter....

Papa indeed, knowing nothing of any conference or of any dark cloud
either, was treated to the astonishment of his life. When he finally
understood that the house was not in flames, or his wife stricken with a
deadly malady, when he began to get some notion of what all the strange
pother was about, his replies, for the most part, took the following
general directions: (1) that little Callipers was out of her mind with
her sickness, didn't know what she was talking about, crazy, and the
greatest little goose that ever was; (2) that she had no business ever
going to the Works, but that was all right now, and he didn't want to
hear another word about it; (3) that he couldn't stop to talk such
foolishness in business hours, and she'd better go and lie down and rest
and get her senses back; (4) that he gave her that money for herself,
and when he got dependent on his little daughter, he'd let her know; (5)
and that there, there, not to bother him now, we'd see, after lunch....

Sufficiently vague replies these; yet they seemed to leave the daughter
in no doubt whatever that the matter which had all in a moment become
dear to her heart was as good as settled. For when papa terminated the
conversation by smartly ringing off, she immediately called another
number: Jefferson 4127, this one was, which, as the book shows (only she
did not look at the book) is the number assigned to Meeghan's Grocery,
down by the old Dabney House....

However the untutored voice at Meeghan's reported that Doctor was out on
his