sted.

"All right." Janet opened her book and began to read.

"Was it anything important?" Phyllis inquired, with pretended
indifference.

"Fearfully,"--Janet did not look up from her book as she replied.

Phyllis appeared to consider the matter.

"Tell me what kind you want and I'll throw it to you," she offered by
way of compromise.

Janet only went on reading.

"Oh, well, if I must, I must!" Curiosity won, and Phyllis got up
slowly, the candy box in her hand. "Only never again allude to
dispositions," she finished as she gave it to Janet.

"Thank you, dear," Janet said sweetly as she rooted in the bottom of
the box for a nut.

"Well?" Phyllis demanded, "what did Sally want?"

Janet finished her candy and selected another before she answered.

"Sally called up to tell me that our costumes would be ready to try on
at four o'clock to-day and that she would call for us in Daphne's car."

"Oh, how nice Taffy can be when she wants to." Phyllis was now wide
awake. "Did Sally say when the not-to-be-hurried Miss Pringle intended
to finish our things?"

"To-morrow, not later than twelve o'clock."

"Do you think she really will have them done then?"

"I should hope so; she's had them for ages," Janet replied. "Now,
Phil, do keep still and let me read in peace until the girls come, I
have a corking story and I'm just in the middle of the most thrilling
part."

"What is it?" Phyllis inquired.

"'The White Company,' by Conan Doyle," Janet replied.

"Oh, I've read that and it is a thriller. I won't bother you any
more." She turned her attentions to the candy box, and then because
she was now too wide awake to dream lazily on the lounge again she went
over to the window and looked out.

The snow had stopped and a cold sun was struggling through a mass of
heavy clouds. She gazed below her idly. A man was on the roof of the
house across the yard. The roof covered an extension that was only one
story high but ran out from the house almost to the end of the yard,
and brought it quite near to the roof of the kitchen of Miss Carter's
house.

Phyllis watched the man with lazy interest. He was the caretaker, she
knew, for the family was down South. He seemed to be fitting a heavy
wire screen into one of the smaller windows immediately above the
extension.

"Now, I wonder what he's doing that for?" she said aloud to herself.
"Looks as though they were fixing that room for a baby."

Miss Carter came