Anna Alice Chapin

“ Betty chuckled. “He'll need all his before I'm done with him!” she remarked amiably.
“Betty!” cried the other girl, staring. “Aren't you going to leave?”
“Sure——when I'm ready.”
“To-day?”
“It might be to-day,” said Elizabeth, and raised a hand to politely suppress a yawn. “Anyway, I'm delighted Dan is in town, and you, and Pretty Lester. Mummy and I were saying this morning we didn't know a soul. This makes it just right. I wasn't going to stay, but I don't know—I really don't know! ”

“ I'm not after your graft, and you can't butt in on mine, for you've no Alibi.”
“I can put Lonsdell wise——” Jane began uncertainly.
Betty cut her short. “I would!” she advised sarcastically. “Can the 'straight' gag, Frisco Baby of the Barbary Coast; it doesn't go with me any better than it does with Danny Lonsdell. You're no more on the straight than—than Ali and I are. Or if you are,” she added maliciously, “it's because you aren't clever enough to go quite so far as we! ”

“ At last Betty understood their game. They were playing around with a plump, firm-featured, prosperous-looking lady, in too-fashionable widow's weeds and showy ornaments. She and Jane traveled in a chair while Charlie strolled alongside, and the three of them stopped every two minutes to look at shop windows, sometimes to go in. ”

“ Mullen had returned to the point of departure which had chiefly interested her.
“'Bout them dropped packages you said was a good graft,” she reminded her child in a gentle and reproachful wheeze. “All you got to do is collect 'em. Ain't that right? Just collect 'em as they drop, one after the other.”
“Mother, you ought to have been a president or something!” exclaimed Boston Betty in a tone of awe and joy. “Collect them is the answer; and Alibi will do it!”
Just here Alibi deserves a generous paragraph all to his small and marvelous self. ”

“ Mummy was the goods, all right, she said to herself for the thousandth time. Then she sat still, stroking the fox terrier, and waited.
The sun was bright. Two aëroplanes flew past over the sea, pure gold in that light, dream birds of unimaginable beauty. The foam purred deeply on the sand. ”

“ Only trouble is, they haven't found a way of getting it out.”
“Haven't, eh?” said Mrs. Mullen, wiping her moist red nose. “I guess they've found it down here all right! Are we workin'?”
“I don't know,” said Betty. “I'm sort of looking for another friend.”
Where was Dan Lonsdell? Not shadowing the three ahead.
“As a detective,” inwardly commented Elizabeth disdainfully, “he would make a great street-car conductor!”
The chair ahead pulled up at a very small, very smart, very expensive jeweler's shop where some beautiful things are bought, and many more altered or repaired. ”

“ Anything to say, Jane?”
Jane had nothing to say and walked off with fury vibrating in every loud-colored ruffle of her.
Betty turned to look after her. “Of all the rigs!” she murmured. “You could spot her a mile off. Back, John? All right. Wake up, mummy. We're going back to the hotel for lunch!”
After luncheon, Betty called up Atlantic City police headquarters. No; Mr. Daniel Lonsdell hadn't been there in six months. Yes, Captain Bates knew him. Was there any message in case he should drop in?
“Tell him,” Elizabeth said in her sweetest accents, “that Betty was looking for him!” ”

“ Mullen fondly. “If he don't know already!”
“Sure he knows,” responded Betty. “It'll be a cinch—though a bit risky except after dark. Alibi can retrieve like no other dog alive. It's to be fetch and carry, Alibi, love!”
Alibi's ears understood and acquiesced. He waited for further directions, still wisely and lovingly looking upward at his dark-eyed deity.
Betty, when she once started, planned rapidly. She now spoke to the negro who was stolidly pushing their wheeled chair along. ”

“ So near and yet so—— if something would only happen. Something was beginning to happen right then. The smooth, black suede fingers left the bag in an airy gesticulation. It lay there unprotected a moment; the fingers touched it again, only to again relinquish it. Now it was balanced on the very edge of the chair arm, and there was a humpy board in the walk coming. ”

“ That 'Burmese ruby pendant' is worth, I should say, all of three dollars, and I'm sending it along, with my love, as you may like it for a souvenir, and Ali and I travel light and have no use for junk. Just a tip: the dame you picked may be all right, but she looks too wise for you to handle——” Danny paused to look reproachfully at Emma McGorkle who threw up her hands in despair. ”

“ At the Law Building she dismissed the chair, located a stenographer, dictated and signed a letter which made that innocent business woman stare with astonishment, and left it, a small package and some money for a messenger boy to take letter and parcel to a certain hotel. ”