again later in
the afternoon."

"You may do that, too," said Connie. "But since you are here, I'm
afraid I must insist that you help amuse me." And she added ruefully,
"Since I have done so well amusing you this morning."

"Why, he's just like anybody else," she was thinking with relief. "It's
no trouble to talk to him, at all. He's nice in spite of the millions.
Prudence says millionaires aren't half so dollar-marked as they are
cartooned, anyhow."

He stayed for luncheon, he even helped carry the folding table out
beneath the cherry tree, and trotted docilely back and forth with plates
and glasses, as Connie decreed.

"Oh, father," she chuckled to herself, as she stood at the kitchen
window, twinkling at the sight of the millionaire's son spreading
sandwiches according to her instructions. "Oh, father, the boy question
is complicated, sure enough."

It was not until they were at luncheon that the grand idea visited
Connie. Carol would have offered it harborage long before. Carol's mind
worked best along that very line. It came to Connie slowly, but she gave
it royal welcome. Back to her remembrance flashed the thousand witty
sallies of Carol and Lark, the hundreds of times she had suffered at
their hands. And for the first time in her life, she saw a clear way of
getting even. And a millionaire's son! Never was such a revenge fairly
crying to be perpetrated.

"Will you do something for me, Mr. Hedges?" she asked. Connie was only
sixteen, but something that is born in woman told her to lower her eyes
shyly, and then look up at him quickly beneath her lashes. She was no
flirt, but she believed in utilizing her resources. And she saw in a
flash that the ruse worked.

Then she told him softly, very prettily.

"But won't she dislike me if I do?" he asked.

"No, she won't," said Connie. "We're a family of good laughers. We enjoy
a joke nearly as much when it's on us, as when we are on top."

So it was arranged, and shortly after luncheon the young man in the
immaculate spring suit took his departure. Then Connie summoned her aunt
by phone, and told her she must hasten home to help "get ready for the
millionaire's son." It was after two when the twins arrived, and Connie
and their aunt hurried them so violently that they hadn't time to ask
how Connie got her information.

"But I hope I'm slick enough to get out of it without lying if they do
ask," she told herself. "Prudence says it's not really wicked to get