ed the mysteries of the dining-room table, behind the
red cloth of which Skippy was to be waiting.

"Hist! It's me," she said in a wary whisper. Then, having consumed ten
minutes in moving six feet serpent fashion across the creaky floor, she
gained the table. Skippy was not there. She rose violently, bumping her
head, scrambled out and rushed into the parlor. The phonograph likewise
had disappeared.

"He's on the trail at last," she thought excitedly. "Hurray!"

But at that precise moment the strangest of strange, uncanny sounds was
heard. Tootsie stood stock still and listened with a pumping heart.
There was no question about it, the phonograph was gone, yet faintly,
like a sinking moan, she heard, she was sure she heard, the thin, tinny
sounds of a Sousa two-step. The room was dim, the house deserted. For
one brief moment she stood panic-stricken, poised for flight. Then she
shook her head angrily.

[Illustration: The partner of his arms, escaping, rolled over towards
Tootsie. _Page 182_]

"Fiddlesticks, phonographs don't have ghosts!"

And listening more intently, she gradually located the familiar strains
as coming from the distant carriage house. In a fever of expectancy
Tootsie flew across the lawns and gained the open door. Above her the
phonograph was pumping out the thrilling measures of the latest
two-step, but what puzzled her immediately were the scuffling, shifting
sounds, like a scurry of rats, which accompanied it. Then a suspicion of
the truth came to her and she tiptoed up the stairs. On the open floor
Skippy with his arms about a strange shape was painfully treading in and
out of a maze which, with a bench, a barrel and two chairs, he had
arranged to visualize the perils of the ballroom.

"Thief!"

Skippy started, shied into the bench and went over backwards while the
partner of his arms, escaping, rolled over towards Tootsie, discovering
under Clara's best organdie dress the net-work of wire which made up the
missing dressmaker's form!

CHAPTER XXVI

CONTAINING SOME HIGH MELODRAMA

THERE are great moments in life when the acquired veneer of society
drops away and human beings revert to type. Tootsie lay down on her back
and kicked her legs in the air, howling with glee. Skippy, disentangling
himself from the bench, rose with slow deliberation. He saw that he
faced a crisis. If Tootsie, now rolling before him in hysterical agony,
ever was allowed to tell such a story as this, the