“Vitiated,” repeated Miss Frink musingly, “Fine word, Vitiated.”

“Growing childish, upon my soul,” thought the secretary. “The first break!”

“The point is,” he declared with dignity, “the significant point is, that he did not stop smoking. He asked the nurse to close the transom.”

“Poor boy, he needn’t have done that,” said Miss Frink; “and, by the way, Dr. Morton didn’t give him the cigarettes.”

“I suppose he got around the nurse, then.”

“No. She isn’t guilty either; and, Grim”—Miss Frink paused and put back her eyeglasses through which she regarded the faithful one[46] steadily—“I am entirely prepared to go around wearing a gas-mask if necessary. I might be needing one now for brimstone if it wasn’t for that boy, and he is going to have any plaything it occurs to him to want. Now, let’s get at these letters.”

[46]

Her secretary blinked, and put one hand to his temporarily whirling head, while with the other he automatically gathered up the mail.

When, toward the close of that eventful gala day at Farrandale, Miss Frink had courageously returned to the scene of the festivities, two girls witnessed the burst of applause which greeted her as she stepped from her secretary’s motor.

One of them, a typical flapper, her hair and her skirt equally bobbed, gazed balefully at the apparition of the lady of the old school as she bowed in response to the plaudits of her townspeople. The other, a gentle-looking, blonde girl, smiled unconsciously at the black satin figure, as she joined in the applause.

The eyes of the flapper snapped. “You shan’t do it, Millicent,” she said, pulling her friend’s clapping hands apart.

“I must,” laughed Millicent. “I’m a loyal Ross-Grahamite.”

[47]

[47]

They were sitting in that part of the grandstand which had not embarrassed Rex and Regina by falling.

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