Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/345

 "Gee, but yuh're the finicky-fingered kid! Now, honey child, yuh listen to me. Yuh're honest, and I'm goin' to be honest with yuh. That's the best way, isn't it?"

"I think so," answered the girl.

"Well, to begin with, I'm a plant. I'm a plant and nothin' more."

"A plant?" echoed the girl in the uniform. She was beginning to see daylight. Here, after all, was dementia with delusions. Here was a human being calmly asserting herself to be a member of the vegetable kingdom.

"I mean, Mabel, I'm in this bush-league burg o' yours on secret service."

"On secret service?" repeated the girl.

"Yuh ain't hep to what that means?"

The head under the nurse's cap moved slowly from side to side.

"D'yuh know what a is?"

"No."

"Well, I'm one," answered the woman on the bed. "I mean I'm here actin' for the federal authorities at Washington. And in our country, Mabel, that's about the same as actin' for the king and queen of all the British Empire."