Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/291

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

LADY CRUSOE

ever they call it, so he did; and when the check from the antique shop came it was a big one.

It wasn't long after that that Lady Crusoe called on me. It was a real call, and she left a card. And she said as she laid it on the table: "As I told you, I'd rather the rest of the natives didn't know—they haven't seen me since I was a child, and they think that I am just some stranger who rents the old place and who wants to be alone."

After she had gone I picked up the card, and what I read there nearly took my breath away. There are certain names which mean so much that we get to look upon them as having special significance. The name that was on Lady Crusoe's card had always stood in my mind for money—oceans of it. I simply couldn't believe my eyes, and I took it down to Billy.

"Look at that," I said, and laid it before him, "and she has asked us to supper for next Sunday!"

Well, we couldn't make anything of it. Why was a woman with a name like that down here with nothing to eat but the things that William Watters could forage for, and that Billy could supply from his little store, and that she paid for with Sheffield trays?

We had supper that Sunday night in the great dining-room. There was a five-branched candlestick with tall white candles in the center of the

285