arden. Josie
caught step with her and continued her conversation. When Josie
O'Gorman had something to say she usually said it.

"No doubt you wonder how I got in on this. I'll tell you, Miss Dingus.
I got in from the moment you entered the Children's Home Society,
disguised more or less in a cheap serge suit, with two poor little
kiddies with dirty faces and eyes full of tears. I saw by your shoes
that your dress was not the kind you usually wore and you had put it on
to pretend you could not care for the children--were too poor. I saw
how indifferent you were to Polly and Peter and how interested you were
in yourself. You don't remember me, of course. You were too taken up
with yourself--always are in fact--to notice other persons. I am the
unimportant person who put you on to a shoe sale. I knew you would take
advantage of it. I am also the person who sat by you when you were
purchasing the shoes and flattered you about your feet. They are pretty
but they have led you out of the straight and narrow path. I am going
to give you some advice now. You won't follow it because, Miss Dingus,
when all is told you have very little sense."

"Can you beat it?" Dink repeated.

"Mighty little sense and no heart, but you are a woman and my
sympathies are with you, so I'll go ahead with my advice. In the first
place, when you want to destroy letters stay with them until they are
burned to ashes. A grate in a boarding house is a poor place in which
to leave letters you don't want seen."

"Oh!" gasped Dink.

"In the next place, don't trust handsome, distant cousins, who get you
to do the dirty work."

"You mean Chester Hunt?"

"Yes, Chester Hunt! He is on to you, Miss Dingus, and since I put him
wise to your disloyalty I feel it but fair to put you on to his. Don't
trust him an inch. He is even worse than you are, because he has some
sense and there is no excuse for him. In the first place he has no more
idea of marrying you than he has of marrying me--in fact not quite so
much," declared Josie with a twinkle in her eye. "He thinks I am such a
good cook he might even consider me, but he looks down upon you as
beneath him socially in spite of the fact that your are distant
cousins. He has merely played with you and used you to gain his ends. I
can tell you on my word of honor that he intended to marry his
step-brother's widow, Mrs. Stephen Waller, and nothing but the timely
coming alive of Captain Waller prevented his trying