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160 "Dad hasn't any secret service stuff, I'm sure of that. Now we have to come all the way back here again, and that means hurrying through our shopping."

"You needn't come," said Betty mildly. "Your father asked me to give those papers personally to Mr. Waters. He didn't say they were important; I don't know that they are. But if I say I am going to give an envelope personally to any one, I don't intend to give that envelope to a third person if there's nothing in it more valuable than—hair nets!"

The window they were passing suggested the comparison, and Bobby laughed good-naturedly and forebore to argue further. Promptly at three o'clock she and Betty entered the elevator in the office building and were whirled up to the fifth floor to find Mr. Waters in his private office.

"Mr. Littell telephoned half an hour ago," he told them, taking the envelope and running over the papers with a practised eye as he talked. "He hoped to catch you before you left here. I believe he wants to speak to his daughter. There's a booth right there, Miss Bobby."

Bobby had a brief conversation with her father and came out in a few minutes in evident haste.

"He wants us to do a couple more errands, Betty," she announced. "We'll have to hurry, for it's after three."