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Rh she conceded, and a little perplexed pucker appeared between her eyes.

"Your sister's salad was a triumph the other night," Thomas Hornby went on, tormentingly. "The kumquats simply made it, for me. The gutter didn't hurt them a bit."

"Oh, you saw me that day!" Lucretia exclaimed.

"I saw you, poor Sarah Crewe," he taunted.

The perplexed pucker between Lucretia's eyes deepened. "That letter of mine, that perfectly inexcusable and nauseating letter of mine—" she retorted.

"Oh, please, please," he objected.

"Is up-stairs in my muff, and has been ever since I wrote it," she went on. "Mr. Hornby, I don't believe I like jokes I can't see through. Are you going to explain this one to me sometime?"

"Sometime," he granted. Then, "Who's Tom?" he inquired. "We'd got that far when your brother dragged me in to see his blessed geranium tree, and you ran away, Cinderella. Who's Tom?"

"He's nobody," Lucretia assured Mr. Hornby hotly. "Tom is just a comfortable name I use, to write inexcusable letters to—once in a while. I wouldn't impose such rot on anybody real."