her wrists first to
avoid colic. She looked up at me in surprise.

"Do you mean to say, Lizzie," she demanded, "that you don't recognize
that advertisement?"

"Modestine?" I reflected. "I've heard the name before somewhere. Didn't
Tish have a cook once named Modestine?"

But it seemed that that was not it. Aggie sat down opposite me and took
off her bonnet. Although it was only the first of May, the weather, as I
have said, was very warm.

"To think," she said heavily, "that all the time while I was reading it
aloud to her when she was laid up with neuralgia she was scheming and
planning and never saying a word to me! Not that I would have gone; but
I could have sent her mail to her, and at least have notified the
authorities if she had disappeared."

"Reading what aloud to her--her mail?" I asked sharply.

"'Travels with a Donkey,'" Aggie replied. "Stevenson's 'Travels with a
Donkey.' It isn't safe to read anything aloud to Tish any more. The
older she gets the worse she is. She thinks that what any one else has
done she can go and do. If she should read a book on poultry-farming she
would think she could teach a young hen to lay an egg."

As Aggie spoke a number of things came back to me. I recalled that the
Sunday before, in church, Tish had appeared absorbed and even more
devout than usual, and had taken down the headings of the sermon on her
missionary envelope; but that, on my leaning over to see if she had them
correctly, she had whisked the paper away before I had had more than
time to see the first heading. It had said "Rubber Heels."

Aggie was pacing the floor nervously, holding the empty glass.

"She's going on a walking tour with a donkey, that's what, Lizzie," she
said, pausing before me. "I could see it sticking out all over her while
I read that book. And if we go to her now and tax her with it she'll
admit it. But if she says she is doing it to get thin don't you believe
it."

That was all Aggie would say. She shut her lips and said she had come
for my recipe for caramel custard. But when I put on my wraps and said I
was going to Tish's she said she would come along.

Tish lives in an apartment, and she was not at home. Miss Swift, the
seamstress, opened the door and stood in the doorway so we could not
enter.

"I'm sorry, Miss Aggie and Miss Lizzie," she said, putting out her left
elbow as Aggie tried to duck by her; "but she left positive orders to
admit nobody. Of course if she had kn