"Yes, and face the Kat calls," laughed Bert. "Sorry you haven't a telephone, but I'll be up soon to hear about what happens. And oh, by the way, be sure that your skylight is closed and the ladder down;—those girls will nose about everywhere. Good-bye." And Dick went back in to tell Moto to attend to the sky-light and the ladder and to have something ready for tea, but to make it seem extemporaneous, just the same.
It was about four o'clock when the visitors arrived. The girls were deliciously sweet and gushing and so interested in his quarters and peering into all of the rooms with kittenish ingenuousness; and posing before his typewriter and wondering what it would be like to write splendid articles and see them actually in print, and to really have one's name in "Who's Who!" Wasn't it just marvelous to be so brilliant as that; and doing it all out of his own head, too!
Carter McKnight proved to be an excellent recommendation for Mrs. Sand's descriptive powers. A wooden man, silent with a hard silence; watchful of others and of himself; absolutely a stranger to spontaneity. Ordinarily Dick would not have found him worth considering.
Eventually Dick got them herded to the far end of the lanai, on the promise of tea, and began a disquisition upon the clever habits of the mynah birds, by way of entertainment; but very shortly Kat grew
