"Bold! Well, wait till she discovers who you are, Richard C[oe]ur de Leon." "Not I--you see that door? Well, you just watch me. I came for a particular reason that made me think it best to come--and a very good one," I added, and glanced at her and found her still smiling. "What was it?" She looked me full in the face. "I will tell you some time----" "No, now." "No, next Sunday afternoon, if you will let me walk home with you after you have explained the she-bears." She nodded "All right," and I rose up into the blue sky. I almost thought I had wings. "My aunt is really a kind woman--I can do almost anything with her." "Do you think that proves it?" I said. I wanted to say that I was that sort of a kind person myself, but I did not dare. "My father says she has a foible--she thinks she is a wonderful business woman, because she can run up a column of figures correctly, and that she makes a great to-do over small things, and lets the big ones go. She would not take his advice; so he gave up trying to advise her and she relies on two men who flatter and deceive her." "Yes." "I don't see how she can keep those two men, McSheen and Gillis, as her counsel and agent. But I suppose she found them there and does not like to change. My father says----" Just then Mrs. Argand, after a long scrutiny of us through her lorgnon, said rather sharply: "Eleanor!" Miss Leigh turned hastily and plunged into a sentence. "Aunt, you do not know how much good the little chapel you helped out in the East Side does. Mr. Mar--the preacher there gets places for poor people that are out of employment, and----" "I suppose he does, but save me from these preachers! Why, one of them came here the other day and would not be refused. He actually forced himself into my house. He had a poor family or something, he said, and he wanted me to undertake to support them. And when I came to find out, they were some of my own tenants who had positively refused to pay any rent, and had held on for months to one of my houses without paying me a penny." She had evidently forgotten that she had just said this a moment before. "I happened to remember," she added, "because my agent told me the man's name, O'Neil." "McNeil!" exclaimed Miss Leigh. "Why, that is the name of my poor family!" She cut her eye over toward me with a quizzical sparkle in it. "What! Well, you need not come to me about that man. My counsel said he was one of the worst characters he knew; a regular anarchist--one of these Irish--you know! And when I afterward tried to collect my rents, he got some upstart creature of a lawyer to try and defeat me, and actually did defraud me of my debt." This was a centre shot for me, and I wondered what she would think if she ever found out who the upstart was. The perspiration began to start on my forehead. It was clear that I must get away. She was, however, in such a full sweep that I could not get in a word to say good-by.