Her freckly hands went crossways on her heaving breast.

"It's business just like--like Mr. Drowser's store. Is it?"

She nodded her head.

"Say If I cross my heart and don't mean what I say, I hope to drop
dead the very same day. Say that?"

So she sobbed out those terrible words. "And you promise not to let
him come in?" she added, provisionally.

He promised and then suddenly she raised her head with a kind of
jerk, as if possessed by a sudden, new spirit of determination. Her
eyes were streaming. She looked straight into his face. There was fire
enough in her eyes to dry the tears.

"If--if you wish a thing you--you get--you get it," she gulped.
"Because I wished and wished to go away from that--that place--and
now I made up my mind that we're going to--going to--make a lot of
money for--for you--I just did."

She did not say how they were going to do it.


CHAPTER XII

THE ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT

The next morning Pee-Wee strode forth and made the magnanimous