ness with women, and which interests
them intensely by its very novelty and flatters them by seeming to endow
them with a kind of brain they didn't know they possessed. "I want you
to go upstairs and get my pocketbook. Be careful, for there is over a
hundred dollars in the roll of bills--Evelina will give you the key to
the desk--and go down to the drug store where they keep nice little
clocks and buy me the best one they have. Then please you wind it up
yourself and watch it all day to see if it keeps time with the clock in
your hall, and if it varies more than one minute, take it back and get
another. While you are in the drug store, if you have time, won't you
please select me a new tooth-brush and some nice kind of paste that you
think is good? Make them show you all they have. Pay for it out of one
of the bills."

"Want any good, smelly soap?" I came out of my trance of absolute
admiration to hear Henrietta ask in the capable voice of a secretary to
a millionaire. Her thin little face was flushed with excitement and
importance, and she edged two feet nearer the charmer.

"It would be a good thing to get about a half dozen cakes, wouldn't it?"
answered Jane, with slight uncertainty in her voice as if leaving the
decision of the matter partly to Henrietta.

"Yes, I believe I would," Henrietta decided judicially. "The 'New Mown
Hay' is what Jasper got for Petunia because he hit her too hard last
week and swelled her eye. They is a perfumery that goes with it at one
quarter a bottle. That makes it all cheaper."

"Exactly the thing, and we mustn't spend money unnecessarily," Jane
agreed. "But I don't want to trespass on your time, Henrietta, dear,"
she added with the deference she would have used in speaking to the
President of the Nation League or the founder of Hull House.

"No, ma'am, I'm glad to do it, and I'll go quick 'fore it gets any later
in the day for me to watch the clock," answered Henrietta in stately
tones that were very like Jane's and which I had never heard her employ
before.

And before any of the three of us got our breath her bare little feet
were flashing up my front walk.

"Help!" exclaimed Polk as he leaned back from his wheel and fanned
himself with his hat. "Do you use the same methods with grown beasts
that you do with cubs?" he added weakly.

"It's the same she has always used on me, only this is more dramatic.
Beware!" I said with a laugh as I insisted on just one squeeze of Jane's