ike two years ago, Betty?" asked Madeline
thoughtfully when Eleanor had left them, persisting that she really had
an engagement before dinner.

"I even remember what she was like three years ago," laughed Betty
happily.

"Fancy her giving up a chance like this then!" mused Madeline. "Fancy
her contributing ideas to the public good and trying to escape taking
the credit for them. Why, Betty, she's a different person."

"I'm so glad you're friends now," said Betty, squeezing Madeline's arm
lovingly.

"That's so," Madeline reflected. "We weren't two years ago. I used to
hate her wire-pulling so. And now I suppose I'm pulling wires for her
myself. Well, I'm going to be careful not to pull any of them down on
her head this time. I say, Betty, wouldn't the Blunderbuss make a superb
jack-in-the-box? I'm sure everybody would appreciate the symbolic effect
when she popped, and perhaps we could manage to smother her by mistake
between times."

The toy-shop took "like hot-cakes," to borrow Bob's pet comparison.
Everybody told Madeline that it was just like her, and Madeline assured
everybody gaily that she had always known she was misunderstood and that
anyhow Eleanor Watson was responsible for the toy-shop. Having spent the
better part of a day in spreading this information Madeline rushed off
to New York on a vague and mysterious errand that had something to do
with sub-letting the apartment on Washington Square.

* * * * *

"I remembered after I got down here," she wrote Betty a week later,
"that I couldn't eat my solitary Christmas dinner in the flat if I let
it. Besides my prospective tenants are bores, and bores never appreciate
old furniture enough not to scratch it. But I'm staying on to oversee
the fall cleaning, and we haven't had one for a good while, so it will
take another week. I'm sorry not to be on hand for the toy-shop doings
(don't you let them put it off, Betty, or I can never make up my work),
but I send a dialogue--no, it's for four persons--on local issues for
the Punch and Judy puppets. If they can't read it, tell them to
cultivate their imaginations. I'll print the title, 'The Battle of the
Classes,' to give them a starter.

"Miss me a little,
"MADELINE.

"P. S. How are the wires working?"

If Eleanor suspected any hidden motive behind Madeline's sudden
departure she had