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 she asked at last. "If a person just doesn't want any breakfast"

She let the sentence hang there, and presently Jock opened a new topic. "What did you do about Cecily's mother?"

"Oh, I telephoned her after we got here last night, in my best drawing-room voice, and told her I was Mrs. Somebody-or-other—Cecily gave me the name—and that her daughter was spending the night with my daughter and would be home this morning sometime. You'll have to drive her out there later on. And don't scold her too much, will you? She thinks you're simply going to lay her low, and she's worried to death. She explained it all to me at great length—said, 'you see I'm sort of a pupil of his'—" Yvonne broke off to laugh reminiscently. "Isn't she the cunningest?" she finished. "You know, I'm wild about her."

Then Cecily reëntered, looking down at the shortened skirt as she walked and kicking her legs forward to get the effect, somewhat in the manner of a goose-stepping soldier. "How is it?" she inquired. "I had to use plain pins in some places. And I borrowed a pair of stockings, Yvonne, and these pumps, because red ones look too ridic at breakfast time. Oh, and this hat, too. You don't mind, do you?"

Yvonne said that indeed she didn't mind, and Jock reflected that Yvonne really ought to give Cecily the hat as a present, so wonderfully it suited her. And he bundled her into her soft gray squirrel coat, and off they went, calling back good-byes to Yvonne from the hall.

"Good-bye!" echoed Yvonne gayly.

"Good-bye," she added in a whisper, and pressed clenched knuckles hard against lips suddenly contorted.