's why I left you down the street. I dropped into Blessington's
for the sole purpose of asking her."

"And she fell for it?"

"She accepted my invitation--yes."

After a long pause George ground his cigarette beneath his heel, and
rose.

"In wrong, as usual," he admitted with winning simplicity. "I never
did guess _any_thin' right the first time. Only--you just grab this
from me: maybe she's willin' to run the risk of bein' seen with us,
but that ain't sayin' she's anybody but Marian Blessington."

"You really think it likely that Miss Blessington, hiding from her
guardian and anxious to escape detection, would take a job at the
glove counter of her own store, where everybody must know her by
sight--where her guardian, Shaynon himself, couldn't fail to see her
at least twice a day, as he enters and leaves the building?"

Staggered, Bross recovered quickly.

"That's just her cuteness. She doped it out the safest place for her
would be the last place he'd look for her!"

"And you really think that she, accustomed to every luxury that money
can buy, would voluntarily come down to living here, at six dollars a
week, and clerking in a department store--simply because, according to
the papers, she's opposed to a marriage that she can't be forced to
contract in a free country like this?"

"Wel-l...." George floundered helplessly for a moment; and fell back
again upon an imagination for the time being stimulated to an abnormal
degree of inventiveness:

"P'raps old Shaynon's double-crossed her somehow we don't know nothin'
about. He ain't above it, if all they tell of him's true. Maybe he's
got her coin away from her, and she had to go to work for a livin'.
Stranger things have happened in this burg, P.S."

It was the turn of P.S. to hesitate in doubt; or at all events, so
George Bross inferred from a sudden change in the expression of the
little man's eyes. Momentarily they seemed to cloud, as if in
introspection. But he rallied quickly enough.

"All things are possible, George," he admitted with his quizzical
grin. "But this time you're mistaken. I'm not arguing with you,
George; I'm _telling_ you: you're hopelessly mistaken."

"You think so--huh?" growled George. "Well, I got eight iron bucks
that says Marian Blessington to any five of your money."

He made a bold show of his pay envelope.

"It'd be a shame to rob you, George," said P. Sybarite. "Besides,
you're bad-tempered when broke."

"Never you mind