"Just by being especially nice to Dick," she said thoughtfully, "I can make him more furious with me than in any other way." Nancy and Caroline finished their sloppy ices at the table together while Dick and Billy sought the solace of a pipe in the garage outside. "I don't understand coming into Connecticut to-day," Nancy said as soon as they were alone; "it seems like such a stupid excursion for Dick to make. He's usually pretty good at picking out places to go. In fact, he has a kind of genius for it." "He slipped up this time," Caroline said, "I'm so hot." "So am I," said Nancy, slumping limply into the depths of her red velour chair. "I want to get back to New York. Oh! what was it you told me the other day that you had been saving up to tell me?" Caroline brightened. "Oh, yes! Why, it was something Collier Pratt said about you. You know Betty has scraped up quite an acquaintance with him. She goes and sits down at his table sometimes." "She's going to be stopped doing _that_," Nancy said. "Well, you remember the night when you went home early with a headache, and passed by his table going out?" "Yes, but I didn't know he saw me." "He sees everything, Betty says." "He didn't suspect me?" "He didn't know you came out of the interior. He said to Betty, 'It's curious that Miss Martin never stays here to dine in the evening, though she so often drops in.' Betty is pretty quick, you know. She said, 'I think Miss Martin is a friend of the proprietor.'" "So I am," said Nancy, "the best friend she's got. Go on, dear." "Then he said slowly and thoughtfully, 'It's a crime for a woman like that not to be the mother of children. If ever I saw a maternal type, Miss Ann Martin is the apotheosis of it. Why some man hasn't made her understand that long ago I can not see.'" Nancy's cheeks burned crimson and then white again. "How dare Betty?" she said. "Wait till you hear. You know Betty doesn't care what she says. Her reply to that was peculiarly Bettyish. She sighed and cast down her eyes,--the little imp! 'The course of true love never does run smooth,' she said; 'perhaps Ann has discovered the truth of that old saying in some new connection.' She didn't mean to be a cat, she was only trying to create a romantic interest in your affairs, doing as she would be done by. The effect was more than she bargained for though. Collier Pratt's eyes quite lit up. 'I can imagine no greater crime than frustrating the instincts of a woman like that,' he said. Imagine that--the instincts--whereupon Betty, of course, flounced off and left him." "She would," Nancy said. Then a storm of real anger surged through her. "I'll turn her out of my place to-morrow. I'll never look at her or speak to her again." "I think it would be more to the point," Caroline said, "to turn out Collier Pratt. That was certainly an extraordinary way for him to speak of you to a girl who is a stranger to him."