still and let them sink in: books around the walls, a few water colours
and bits of porcelain, an open piano, a work table, a broad divan with
many cushions, ferns in the windows, and the fire.

Virginia, however, saw nothing of this; she was looking at Margaret
Elizabeth. "The Candy Man wanted to know where you stayed when you
weren't here," she remarked at length.

Miss Bentley came out of her brown study in great surprise. Who in the
world was the Candy Man?

"Why, you know the Candy Wagon on the Y.M.C.A. corner! And don't you
remember how you fell in the mud, and the Candy Man helped you up, and
I gave you your bag, and the Miser was there too?" Virginia spoke in
patient toleration of Miss Bentley's strange lapse of memory.

"Naturally I was rather shaken and didn't notice. Was it a Candy Man who
picked me up? And a miser, you say?" Chin in hand Margaret Elizabeth
regarded her visitor. "It is all very interesting, but why should the
Candy Man wish to know about me?"

Virginia owned that she had mentioned the Little Red Chimney to him,
and that when the identity of her ladyship had come to light, he had
exclaimed, "I might have guessed!"

"Well, really," said Miss Bentley, sitting up very straight, "what
business is it of his to be guessing about me?"

"He isn't Irish like Tim," Virginia hastened to assure her. "He's very
nice. He's a friend of mine."