like David! David, in
Anthony's shoes, six or seven sizes too large, should have been thumping
clumsily; these footsteps were firm little pats, with the sharp rap of a
heel once or twice on the polished floor beside the runner. More still,
with no regard at all for caution, David, using his soprano voice, was
humming the same little tune.

And just as pure premonition had sent Anthony's skin to crawling, just
as his scalp was prickling and his eyes narrowing angrily, David was
with them.

By way of raiment, David, the grip emptied, wore the daintiest tailored
walking-gown, short of skirt and displaying silken stockings and patent
leathers, with high, slender French heels. David's slim, round,
girl-throat suggested the faintest powdering; David's abundant hair was
dressed bewitchingly, with little reddish-blond curls straying down
about the temples--and had one spent a morning on Fifth Avenue it would
really have been rather difficult to find a more thoroughly attractive
or better gowned girl than David!

Yet, in spite of her charms, Johnson Boller, who had bounced
instinctively from his chair, could do no more than stare at David with
the general expression of a fish new-snatched from water. Second after
second he gaped before his thick:

"Who's that?"

"That's David!" Anthony said weakly.

"The--the boy was a girl?"

"It would seem so."

"Then----" Johnson Boller stopped, teeth shutting suddenly. He stared at
the young woman and he stared at Anthony Fry, who smiled faintly and
hopelessly. His face grew red and then purple and then black.

"Hah!" he cried savagely. "I've got it! I've got it, you--you----"

"Hey?" said Anthony.

"I see it now!" Mr. Boller vociferated surprisingly. "You framed this
thing up on _me_!"

CHAPTER VIII

Scorned

Anthony's brain, accustomed to the most precise and unexciting of
routines, was tired--not nearly so tired as it was destined to become,
yet too tired to grasp at once the significance of that flaming
countenance. He could no more than stand limply and look at Johnson
Boller, as that gentleman, ignoring Mary altogether, strode down upon
him with clenched fists.

"You did it, but you'll never get away with it!" he cried.

"Johnson----"

"Never in the world! I've got Wilkins as a witness and----"

"Witness for what?"

Johnson Boller, albeit he trembled with fury, controlled himself.

"Don't try that baby-stare stuff on me, Fry," he said. "I understand