“I’m afraid I cannot answer,” he said brusquely. “Leave my greetings for Miss Clergy and don’t try to wear your mascot as a watchguard—happy days, to-morrow as usual.” Patting her on the shoulder, he dismissed himself. Thurley set the mascot before her books and returned to grubbing. Two hours later she glanced up and the diamond eyes gave her a jolly twinkle. “I say,” she remarked out loud, “you are first aid to the agitated! Now tell me—didn’t he for just a moment treat me as if I were a real _woman_?” So passed the first New York Christmas! The next day, when Thurley went for her lesson, she had the pleasure of being snubbed and scolded. But passing out of the studio, she saw the little Buddha sitting on his desk very close to where his hand must reach each time he took up his pen or blotted a letter! CHAPTER XV Ernestine Christian did not return to town until February, having been induced to play engagements on the Pacific coast. It was the mid-winter thaw when she arrived. She telephoned Thurley almost immediately and, to Thurley’s delight, asked her to come and have coffee that afternoon as it was a Sunday and lessons were not a consideration. “Sure you won’t come along?” Thurley asked Miss Clergy, dutifully, as she made ready. “Quite sure, my dear. This wind would start every bone aching to perdition,” Miss Clergy told her, “and do put on a prettier dress—there may be guests.” Thurley looked at her proverbial blue serge with hesitation. “Oh, I can’t bother to be done up in a real creation—we’ve such loads to talk over and Ernestine’s clothes are the sort one never really notices and yet, describing them as detached things, they are quite wonderful. Do you think I ought to change?” for it suggested itself to her that Bliss Hobart might drop in for greetings. “I should. You can’t be too particular, Thurley. The time is coming when the world will want to know what sort of frocks you wear every clock stroke of the day.” Here Miss Clergy yawned and settled back among innumerable cushions and Thurley spied the cover of a popular novel—one of Caleb’s, to make it the more amusing—peeping forth. “Well, if I must—I must,” she said, darting into her room and donning a tea-green velour with wee fur buttons up to the arctic verge of her pink ears. She wrapped a mantle of green around herself in careless, becoming fashion, kissed Miss Clergy somewhere between the chin and forehead and left her to revel in Caleb’s self-starting romance in which a homely hero was quite the mode. She found Ernestine walking about her salon with Silver Heels perched cordially on her shoulder, purring for joy at his mistress’ return. Ernestine was busy telling the maid wherein she had neglected to carry out orders and why the decorators would be recalled to make amends. There was a pettish air about her criticisms, Thurley thought, for when Thurley came in with wide opened arms, Ernestine merely gave her a shoulder pat, saying,