"How can a handkerchief be upside down?" I inquired, in what was
intended to be a tone of sweet reasonableness.

Contempt was all that it brought me. "Metaphorically, of course! It's a
signal of distress."

"In what distress can Barbran be?"

"In what kind of distress are most people who live next under the roof
in Our Square?"

"She's doing that just to get into our atmosphere. She told me so
herself. A millionaire's daughter--"

"Do millionaires' daughters wash their own handkerchiefs and paste them
on windows to dry? Does any woman in or out of Our Square _ever_ soak
her own handkerchiefs in her own washbowl except when she's desperately
saving pennies? Did you ever wash one single handkerchief in your
rooms, Dominie?"

"Certainly not. It isn't manly. Then you think she isn't a
millionairess?"

"Look at her shoes when next you see her," answered the Bonnie Lassie
conclusively. "_I_ think the poor little thing has put her every cent in
the world into her senseless cellar, and she's going under."

"But, good Heavens!" I exclaimed. "Something has got to be done."

"It's going to be."