pass—and she likely would for those Radways have brains they say, that’s the trouble with them—she’ll make us all kinds of trouble wanting to teach instead of doing the work for you, and then we’d be up against it right away. It costs like the dickens to get a servant these days and there’s no sense in having an outsider around stealing your food and wearing your clothes. Don’t you worry about Joyce. Let her alone till she comes in. Lock the[22] kitchen door so she’ll have to knock. Then I’ll let her in and give her such a dressing down as she’ll remember for a few years. Come on. Let’s turn out this diningroom light and go into the living room. Then she’ll know we’re not going to wash those dishes, and she’ll come in all the sooner.”

[22]

Nannette slapped Dorothea for breaking off another piece from the jelly roll, and turned out the light quickly. It occurred to her that there would be nobody to make another jelly roll when this one was gone unless Joyce came speedily back. She hated cooking.

But although she intentionally neglected to lock the kitchen door, hoping the girl would slip in quietly when they were gone from the diningroom and get the work done, Joyce did not return. Dorothea and Junior were allowed to sit up far beyond their usual bedtime, and after they were at last quiet upstairs, Eugene and Nannette continued to sit and read, loth to leave until their young victim should return repentant and they could tell her just what they thought of her for her base ingratitude. When you know you have done wrong yourself there is nothing so soothing as to be able to scold some one else.

When Nannette finally went upstairs to bed she took the borrowed fox fur and flung it across Joyce’s bed, with its tail dragging on the floor.

“I’m sure I don’t know why we can’t have that will read without waiting for that old mummy to get well,” she said discontentedly. “It’s awfully awkward waiting this way and not knowing what is ours. Why can’t some one else read it if Judge Peterson isn’t able to?”

“Why, no one knows just where it is. His valuable[23] papers are all locked in his safe, and the doctor won’t let him be asked a thing about business till he gets able to be around. He says it might throw him all back to have to think about anything now. Of course it’s all nonsense, but I don’t see what we can do.”

[23]

“Suppose he should die?”

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