"Can anyone beat that?" remarked Nancy, inelegantly. "Ted and his dog and the big--soup--bone! I could put a tune to that; a sad mournful dirgy tune." "Wherever do you suppose he picked up the brute?" Ruth asked. "I don't remember having seen him around town." "Oh, trust Ted," replied Nancy. "When we first came here, mother answered him once, in a most casual, unthinking way: 'Yes.' It seemed his question was could he have a dog, and mother hadn't been paying strict attention. Since then he's been on a hunt for a dog. He brought home a poor half-dead little tatters one day, but some boy followed him up and claimed the beauty. I wonder if this one will be left to him? He seems pretty particular about his food, doesn't he?" "Yes," replied Ruth, who was just glancing out the door. Suddenly she exclaimed: "Here's a taxi coming, and it's the one mother always uses. I guess she's sending for me, I'll go out and see." Nancy looked out and saw Ruth talking earnestly to the driver. She seemed to be disagreeing with the message he was giving her, and she turned abruptly to come back to Nancy. "Imagine that!" she panted, "Mother wants me to meet a train and take an old lady to see the Hilton house. As if I could show a house to one of father's customers!" Ruth's voice betrayed actual antipathy to the very idea. "But why not?" queried Nancy. "If she is just an old lady--" "A rich old lady who has come a distance without notifying father's office, and there isn't a man within call to take her out," Ruth sighed miserably. The thought of showing a house seemed absolutely beyond her. "I'll go with you," Nancy offered. "Why couldn't we show a house? We know how to call out rooms, don't we?" Ruth jerked back her pretty head and stared at Nancy. "All right," she exclaimed, brightening perceptibly. "I'll go if you promise to do the talking. I'm sure you can call off rooms and do more than that in the business line, Nancy. Let's hurry. The train is almost due." So the two young "real estate ladies" were presently seated most circumspectly in the taxi, on the way to "meet a wealthy lady who wanted to look at the Hilton house." And Nancy was fairly aglow with the prospect of a new and interesting business adventure. CHAPTER XIX A DISCOVERY "Isn't she lovely? Looks like a cameo." That was Nancy's remark to Ruth when Mrs. Mortimer Cullen tarried in the sun parlor of the Hilton house, through which the girls were conducting her. But Ruth only sighed. Her task was too obnoxious to permit of compliments even to the handsome, elderly woman, who indeed did look like an animated cameo, set in a frame of gray veils, thrown over a small summer hat.