“The idea of hinting to you in that bare-faced way! Now, if you had been a man it—” “Would have been all right, of course. However, I know how confidential Effie always grows over a cup of tea, so I promptly invited her to lunch with me. After she had accepted, I found that I had only fifty cents to my name. Papa had gone down-town and, mamma had just borrowed a quarter from me!” “My goodness, did you tell Effie that your head ached so badly that you couldn’t go?” “And have her say that I was fretting myself ill over Jack? No, thank you. I excused myself a moment and went downstairs, for I had just remembered a habit Papa has of leaving money lying about on his desk. To my joy, I found a five-dollar bill in one of the drawers, and I took that, because I—” “But weren’t you afraid to take it?” “M—yes, but then one’s own people have to make up with one sometime or other. Well, we had a lovely time shopping, and I took Effie off to luncheon before she had had time to get cross matching samples. It was a lovely luncheon, and before we had finished Effie said she hoped I would visit her at Delavan in August!” “H’m; I suppose she didn’t mention the fact that Jack expects to be in Canada from the last week in July to the first one in September, did she?” “No; she didn’t. Oh, what a cat she is—and I asked her to take another ice on the strength of it! Well I paid the bill, tipped the waiter, and was just going out when the cashier came running after me, and oh, Emily, what do you think?” “You had left your umbrella, of course.” “No, I hadn’t. I—I, that five-dollar bill was a counterfeit which papa was keeping as an object lesson to mamma, who had gotten it in change!” “You might have known that no man with a wife and grown daughter would leave five good dollars in an unlocked drawer, dear. Did Effie—” “Loan it to me? She hadn’t quite enough, and I don’t know what I should have done if Frances had not happened to come in. Effie said that she did not mind borrowing from Frances, because she—she was quite like a sister to her! And now I shall have to make Papa angry by coaxing for money to pay for all those ices Effie ate on false pretenses, and w—worse yet, she and Frances will have the pleasure of laughing over it together!” “And telling Jack about it, too,” gasped the girl with the dimple in her chin, helplessly. “Of course I know they will do that,” sobbed the victim. “But I hardly thought that even an intimate friend would be unpleasant enough to remind me of it!” And she buried her face in the cushions and wept. “Then you are not going to the club this afternoon? Shall I tell them that you are busy with the dressmaker, or the dentist? They know that you can make everybody else wait.” “Tell them nothing. I shall go—and complain of a cold in the head, which will explain the pinkness of my nose and eyes.” “But will any of them believe you?”