Never mind the hot air Mr. Robert passes out after that. What tickles me most is the package that came for me yesterday by messenger. I finds it on my plate at dinner time; so both the old ladies was on hand when I opens it. "Why, Torchy!" says Aunt Martha, lookin' at me shocked and scandalized. "A young lady's picture!" "Yep," says I. "Ain't she a dream, though?" And, say, Martha'd been lecturin' me yet if it hadn't been for Zenobia breakin' in. "Do remember, Martha," says she, "that you were not always sixty-three years old, and that once----Why, bless me! This must be Alicia Vernon's child. Is there a name on the back? There is! Verona Ashton Hemmingway, heiress to all that is left of poor Dick's fortune. She's a beauty, just like her mother." "She's all of that," says I. It didn't make any diff'rence to Aunt Martha who she was, though. She didn't think it right for young ladies to give away their pictures to young men. She was for askin' me how long I'd known Miss Vee, and---- "There, now, Martha," said Zenobia, "suppose we don't." That's how it is I can guess who it was blew themselves for a corkin' big silver frame, and put Vee's picture in it, and stood it on my bureau. Course, Vee's on her way to foreign parts now, and there's no tellin' when she's comin' back. Besides, there ain't anything in it, anyway. But somehow that picture in the silver frame seems to help some. CHAPTER XV BATTING IT UP TO TORCHY Nobody had to point him out to me. I hadn't been holdin' down the chair behind the brass gate more'n two days before I knew who was the living joke on the Corrugated Trust Company's force. It's Uncle Dudley, of course. And, say, my coppin' that out don't go to prove I'm a Mr. Cute. Any mush-head could have picked him after one glimpse of the old vintage Prince Albert, the back number silk lid, and the white Chaunceys he wears on each side of his face. That get-up would be good for a quiet smile even over in Canarsie; but when you come to plant it in the midst of such a sporty aggregation as the Corrugated carries on the payroll--why, you've got the comic chuckles comin' over fast. "Say, Piddie," says I the second morning, after watchin' it blow in, "who's the seed, eh?" "That?" says Piddie. "Oh, that's old Dudley." "Does he wear the uniform reg'lar," says I, "or is he celebratin' some anniversary?" And Piddie almost allows himself to grin as he explains how that's the same costume Dudley has come down to work in every day for the last fifteen years. "Well, it's a flossy outfit, all right," says I. "What is he, one of the directors?" No, he wa'n't. He's some sort of subassistant auditor with a salary of eighteen per. You know the kind--one of these deadwood specimens that stand a show of gettin' the prunin' hook every time there's a shake-up. Most every office has a few of 'em, hangin on like last year's oak leaves in the park; but it ain't often they can qualify as comic supplements.